Five rounds: when dub was sold as a duel

Between 1979 and 1982 a run of dub records was packaged as a bout. Two names on the sleeve, a “versus” between them, the sides split. The artwork staged the fight in cartoon figures, in a house style Greensleeves handed for years to the English illustrator Tony McDermott.

The thread of this selection is that apparatus. Five tracks from three of those records, chosen not to settle who won, but because they show how the contest was assembled and what was actually being decided.

Who was in the room

The rhythms were not the variable. They were played by the Roots Radics, put together in 1978 by bass player Errol “Flabba” Holt, cutting at Channel One for producer Henry “Junjo” Lawes. The foundation under Barrington Levy’s first songs was theirs.

Over identical tracks one thing changed: who sat at the desk. That is where a “versus” between two engineers started to make commercial sense, because in dub the engineer is not a performer.

Dub is the first electronic music where an engineer becomes a composer.

The five rounds

Jammy’s a Not Fool opens Dub Contest, from 1979, where Prince Jammy alternates with Crucial Bunny. The taunt is the title, and the titles work as a scorecard: the first four tracks carry Jammy’s name, the next four carry Bunny’s.

Bunny is Crucial is the answer from the other side of the record. Neither man names the other in the sound. They name each other in the heading, which is where the contest actually lives.

The Man Never Imitate Always Originate comes from Dub War, 1981, a record billed as a clash between two sound systems. All ten tracks are credited to Scientist and nobody else, so the war has a single mixer in the room. The title, for its part, is a claim of authorship.

Storming the Death Star opens Scientist & Prince Jammy Strike Back!, released in 1982. On streaming today that album is credited to the Roots Radics, and so is the track.

Flash Gordon Meets Luke Skywalker is the eighth on the same record, and on Spotify it is the only one of the ten whose credits carry Scientist and Jammy together. On an album named after the two of them, the two survive on one track in ten. A third carries Linval Thompson’s name.

The round where both names survive

Who authors a mix

On the record with Jammy, Scientist is blunt. “Jammys never mixed one track on that record”, he told United Reggae in 2008, claiming he mixed every side himself and that the duel never happened. That is his account, disputed, and the printed credits say otherwise.

The same complaint comes back pointed at his own teacher. He told Tape Op that several records issued under King Tubby’s name were not mixed by Tubby: “I mixed those records”.

The catalogue wrote the sequel. When Greensleeves reissued those sessions, the titles moved onto the producer: Junjo Presents: Wins the World Cup, Linval Presents Space Invaders. On its own page the label describes the records as backed by the Roots Radics at Channel One and mixed by Hopeton “Scientist” Brown.

The engineer’s name stayed in the description. It came off the title.

The five rounds still play the way they were sold, and as entertainment the contest holds up. The other contest, the one over a credit line, never got a verdict.