Keith Hudson: Pick A Dub CD Review
Landmark Dub Reggae Album Still Sounds Futuristic 35 Years On
Feb 23, 2009
Like many Kingston ghetto youths, Hudson cut his teeth hanging around Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd's legendary Studio One. He would watch and listen, often carrying in equipment for ace 1960s Jamaican session players like trombonist Don Drummond.
Hudson was originally a dentist by trade. He would bankroll his own record labels, Imbidimts (sic) and Rebind, from the proceeds of his dentistry. His fledgling musical career began in 1968 when he procured some old Rocksteady rhythms from Kingston's Olympic Records. Adding his own vocals, he created local hits Old Broom and You Must Be Popular.
Early Production Work: Ken Boothe and Big Youth's S-90 Skank
Always ambitious, Hudson gained serious local respect in the early 1970s. His production work included singles with international Reggae stars like Ken Boothe and staple DJ tunes like Big Youth's S-90 Skank and Dennis Alcapone's Spanish Omega. Keen to record under his own name, he then spent time in England where he assembled the acclaimed Flesh Of My Skin album in 1974.
On a creative roll, Hudson soon picked up on the developing Dub scene in Jamaica. He would create Pick A Dub (www.roots-archives.com) over the winter of 1974 at Kingston's Harry J Studio with an all-star cast including The Wailers' rhythm section of Aston 'Family Man' Barrett and Carlton Barrett and guitarist Earl 'Chinna' Smith.
Pick A Dub: One of Dub Reggae's Earliest Classics
An instant Jamaican hit, Pick A Dub's reputation would rightly spread internationally after the fact. It's now widely hailed as arguably the first thematic Dub Reggae album. Its' twelve tracks are deliberately mixed in their instrumental 'version' forms and the results sound every bit as marvellous and disconcerting today as they did in the mid-1970s.
It's Pick A Dub's sparseness that stands out. Later Dub albums by the likes of Scientist would utilise sound effects such as chiming clocks and crowing cockerels, but there's none of that here. Instead, Hudson's production rips the meat from the bones and ensures bass and drums reign supreme.
Tracks like the stunning Don't Move find the subterranean basslines going off the scale. Skeletal, reverb-heavy skanks like Black Heart and Depth Charge inhabit an alien inner space, while the occasional vocal cut-up jars the listener's altered state of reality. It's a tremendous headphone listen and surely a match for even the hallowed likes of Lee 'Scratch' Perry's Super Ape or Gregory Isaacs' superb Slum In Dub.
Later Years: Keith Hudson's Legacy and Influence on PIL'S Metal Box
Keith Hudson (www.firecorner.com) would later have a chequered career. Hoping for another Bob Marley, Richard Branson's Virgin label signed him for 1976's awkward, funk-influenced Too Expensive album. It proved a commercial failure, although a later spell living in New York produced excellent records like 1978's Rasta Communication. Sadly, Hudson then contracted lung cancer and died in November 1984. He was only 38 years old.
Key players in the Post-Punk fraternity would be turned on by Pick A Dub and it's hard to believe ground-breaking albums like PIL'S Metal Box or The Pop Group's Y would have sounded the way they did without it. Keith Hudson may have been too radical to be another Marley, but he left a rich, varied legacy of which Pick A Dub remains the pick of the Herb-assisted crop.
 |
 |
