From St Ann's Bay came Winston Rodney, also known as Burning Spear: his gravelly vocals sounded as though they contained every piece of truth the island of Jamaica had ever known. It was Bob Marley, another man from the parish of St Ann, who had recommended that Rodney check the regular Sunday auditions at Studio One to see if he could get a record released. Soon Spear/Rodney had his first 45 out on Coxsone Dodd's label: 'Door Peep', another name for 'duppy', the Jamaican term for ghost, extraordinary subject-matter for a commercial disc. By 1975, still trading under the Burning Spear name, Rodney had taken up with Rupert Wellington and Delroy Hines in a vocal trio that took the favoured Jamaican form of the three-piece harmony group to its most extreme roots. With the Ocho Rios producer Jack Ruby, Spear made the Marcus Garvey and Man In The Hills albums, remarkable poetic works that expressed the profound vision of the rural Rastafarian. Working on his own from this time onwards, Burning Spear's music swiftly developed, to the point where his 1978 LP Social Living had a near-jazzy timbre. This was really revolutionary music. Spear, moreover, was an almost transcendent live performer, and his shows could touch you deep in your soul. Moving to New York, Burning Spear (pictured below left with Thomas Mapfumo, the giant of Shona music) toured the world, earning the occasional Grammy, and enjoying a thoroughly deserved position as the elder statesman of reggae. - ReggaeXplosion