Reggae Sessions

The list below of Reggae-related sessions (including Reggae-influenced or even pre-Reggae steel drums) was compiled largely from a search through Ken Garner's book The Peel Sessions. Even if you take out the Ruts and the Slits, which some might dispute as being Reggae, you are left with a major canon of work.

Peel's first reggae session, broadcast on 26 December 1970, was by the Rudies. This was their one and only session (recorded 1970-11-23) but the band would reform the following year as Greyhound. British reggae was big at this time and this is a group of Jamaicans who were living in the UK and were intent on riding the interest in reggae. They undoubtedly did a lot to popularise reggae and had a big hit with Black and White. Rudie and Greyhound found it difficult to pass the audition. They auditioned in 1968 as Glenroy Oakley and the Oracles. According to Ken Garner the audition panel recorded that they felt it was "badly played", "wrong chords" "pseudo reggae" "out of tune". It was decided not to broadcast one of The Rudies' tracks - Oh Me Oh My.

Greyhound (they had almost exactly the same line up as The Rudies) recorded the second reggae session on 29/6/71 which was broadcast (whilst Viv Stansall was standing in) on 14/8/71 alongside a session of African musician - Gaspar Lawal. Although the Greyhound session wasn't viewed by Peel and Walters as a great success, it was later repeated in the Peel's Pleasures series on 24 July 1982.

The next sessions were a couple of Bob Marley and the Wailers sessions. The first was recorded on his first tour to the UK - May to July 1973 when he also recorded for Old Grey Whistle Test and BBC In Concert. The second session of that year was recorded in on 26/11/73 when they had returned to tour and broadcast as a gift to the nation on Christmas day. Walters recalls in Ken Garner's The Peel Sessions:

"'Of course all of them were there then. Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh. I seem to remember it took a lot o ftime to get started, there was a lot of sitting around, as you'd expect, and, at that trime, of course, possessing marijuana was an imprisonable offence; they did everything very discretely, but you could smell it even through the double doors.'"

In 1974 the original Wailers were no more as Bob Marley parted company with Tosh and Wailer.

In 1975 The Cimarons were booked and Aswad were recorded their first session in 1976. Apart from these earlier examples the majority of Peel's Reggae sessions are concentrated around the late 70s and 80s and leave a great record of British Reggae at a vibrant time. Peel seems to have had a particular liking for roots reggae - a branch of reggae rooted in the rastafarian faith, dreadlocked, smoking the chalice and giving praise to Jah, and Haile Selassie, Conquering Lion of Judah, Ras Ta Fari. Although Peel complained about the difficulty of booking Jamaican artists Prince Far I, Gregory Issacs and Culture were among those that did make it along to the BBC studios. The ska revival was well represented with sessions from The Beat, The Specials, Madness, Amazulu and The Selecter and Laurel Aitken - an original ska star who toured to new audiences. Dub was present with the Mad Professor and the New Age Steppers and then the likes of Dreadzone produced a late flowering in dub in the 90s. Although Peel did play DanceHall he wasn't an enthusiastic fan of lyrics that were based on toasters boasting of their sexual prowess and there are no examples of their work here.

(dates are first broadcast of session)


 * Laurel Aitken 12/5/80
 * Amazulu 7/7/82 and 17/1/83
 * Aswad 2/9/76 and 18/12/78
 * Basement 5 28/4/80
 * Beat 5/11/79, 22/9/80 and 29/3/82
 * Black Roots 27/5/81 and 14/11/83
 * Black Star Liner 7/4/95, 7/10/97 and 9/2/99
 * Capital Letters 16/1/79
 * Carnastoan 4/1/82 and 19/10/82
 * Centry 16/8/94
 * Cimarons 16/12/75 and 14/12/78
 * Cobra 29/12/91
 * Conscious Sound Collective 7/9/96
 * Culture 11/1/83, 2/1/89 and 9/7/02
 * Dreadzone 7/1/94, 24/9/94 and 16/1/02
 * Eek-A-Mouse 17/10/83 and 26/6/84
 * Icarus 11/12/80
 * Gregory Isaacs and Roots Radics 5/11/81 and 6/12/82
 * Greyhound 14/8/71
 * Linton Kwesi Johnson 8/5/79 and 27/10/81
 * Laurel and Hardy 4/11/82
 * Mad Professor 4/10/82
 * Madness 27/8/79
 * Mangrove Steel Band 1/4/87
 * Bob Marley & The Wailers 1/5/73 and 26/11/73
 * Matumbi 3/5/78, and 13/11/78
 * Mikey Dread 23/8/82
 * Misty 13/6/79, 6/12/79, 29/9/80, 1/6/81, 3/1/83, 29/2/84, 20/5/85, 20/5/86 and 23/7/02
 * Musical Youth 29/4/81 and 28/9/82
 * Naturalites 13/6/83 and 11/6/85
 * New Age Steppers 18/8/83
 * Papa Levi 18/6/84
 * Maxi Priest 6/3/85
 * Prince Far I and Creation Rebel 16/6/78
 * Ragga Twins 16/6/91 and 23/2/92
 * Reggae Regular 3/7/78 and 10/10/78
 * Rudies 23/11/70
 * Ruts 29/1/79, 21/5/79 and 18/2/80
 * Selecter 22/10/79 and 1/12/80
 * Slits 27/9/77, 22/5/78 and 26/10 81
 * Specials 29/5/79, 22/10/79, and 1/12/80
 * Steel Pulse 29/9/77, 27/4/78, 13/8/79, 7/5/80 and 6/1/82
 * Talisman 9/9/81
 * Twinkle Brothers 1/10/81
 * UB40 2/1/80 and 25/1/82
 * Wailing Souls 7/11/84