Lloyd Daley

Lloyd 'The Matador' Daley - Its Shuffle 'N' Ska Time - Jamaican Gold

For a long long time, after the Ska had come and gone - the only way to collect it, was on 7". Apart from a couple of albums from Coxsone and Duke Reid - plus a few v/a albums kept in press on Trojan and Island.

That slowly started to change in the nineties and one of the first truly great Ska compilations was this one on Lloyd Daley put together by Dr.Buster for the Jamaican Gold label.

A magnificent selection full of great sounds by the likes of Neville Esson, Owen Gray, The Overtakers, and the Matador All Stars. Recorded at Federal and the JBC studios these tunes are truly remarkable - they come from the original master tapes and sound fantastic.

Likewise with the truly detailed sleevenotes and photos that come with the CD.

Lloyd Daley - Matador’s Arena Volume 2 - Jamaican Gold

Of all the producers from the reggae era Lloyd Daley its sounds to me - tried very hard to capture that Beverley’s sound.

Lloyd himself says that Prince Buster was a big influence on him - well production wise Buster had a sound of his own - and you can’t really hear any of it here.

Even more stranger is that the big hit on this set U Roy ‘Scandal’ doesn’t sound like anything else on the set, or anything else from the era!

The Deejay style was just coming in then - and with Lloyd Daley’s background in sound system ownership - he would have known how to produce U Roy. Yet ‘Scandal’ and ‘Sound Of The Wise’ remained the only tunes he did with the DJ despite the success of ‘Scandal’.

This rhythm as been covered many many times during the dance-hall era, and very few reggae era rhythms have found favour during that era.

His big artist and whom he did enough work with for an album is Little Roy. He pops up twice here with ‘You Run Come’ and ‘ Keep On Trying’. Little Roy’s voice is perfect for these smooth rhythms - and its shame that he didn’t get more hits with Lloyd then.