Big Youth – Chi Chi Run

1972, FAB & Prince Buster

When is the right time for a HEHHH? When is the right time to deejay? When is the right time to go ‘ackoo, ackoo, ackoo’ into the mic? When is the right time to play the original vocal track, and when is the right time for everyone to shut up and let the rhythm section do their thing?

These are the questions that Big Youth and Prince Buster (as the producer) have all the answers to. This is one of the most musically diverse reggae records from the 70s, which naturally makes it distinct, memorable, fun to listen to, and all that good stuff. Despite being credited to Big Youth (or ‘Prince Buster Allstars’ on the label for some pressings), there are also appearances from Little Youth, Dennis Brown, Alton Ellis, John Holt, Prince Buster himself, and of course his Allstars (the band).

Little Youth, a youth with just a couple tunes to his name, stars on Youth Rock. This is one of the best deejay cuts of the decade, with screams and nonsense on the keys and very tasteful synth and very tasteful slices of the vocals (including the backing singers), and on top of all that, Little Youth sounds good too. Dennis Brown sounds much older than he is on One Day Soon and If I Had The World, both typically excellent Dennis cuts with his voice as buttery as ever. Alton Ellis contributes a partially dubbed cut of Since I Fell For You. Tragically, I cannot for the life of me track down the original vocal for this cut, and I say this is tragic because it’s better than the single version, which is already a timeless classic. You get a taste of the vocals in the Chi Chi Run cut, but mostly you’re listening to the instrumental, lightly dubbed. Little John and Prince Buster do some singing and talking in Chi Chi Run, Leave Your Skeng, Revolution Rock and Revolution Come, but mostly play a back-seat role, letting Big Youth do his thing in the foreground. And the Allstars have three nice tunes to themselves, Shaft (a cover of the soul tune from the film of the same name, and good enough to stand toe-to-toe with the original), Miami Beach (with dubbing) and Boop (with a fantastic title).

It is now the fourth paragraph and I haven’t even talked about Big Youth yet. There is so much going on in this record, and also not that much to say about Big Youth himself. It’s 1972, so unsurprisingly the lyrics are mostly ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary’ or ‘I tell you’ or ‘So the brother say’ or, best of all, ‘HEHHHH’. Big Youth was the first HEHHH deejay, and maybe the greatest, but Trinity gave him a run for his money also. The nursery rhymes are even mixed in with lyrics like ‘Leave your skeng at home’ and ‘I’m gonna try to make love to you’ within a single tune (Leave Your Skeng). It’s probably all improvised, and probably not sober. He doesn’t even finish the Mary, Mary nursery rhyme, and just goes right into Jack and Jill, and then doesn’t finish that either, and then after a pause he does Little Miss Muffet instead. Big Youth on this record is thankfully much less gimmicky than his later works – he just deejays, which is what he’s actually good at.

On paper, this album has so much happening that you’d be tempted to not credit it to Big Youth were you the one releasing it, but giving it a few listens as a fan will keep you sure that this is is a Big Youth record first and foremost. His identity and character and flavor just shine through, even when he steps off the mic for a bit. And of course in 1972 being a deejay on record was a pretty big deal in and of itself. This record is early enough that I believe it is the first reggae deejay LP, with the three deejay LPs out in 1971 being rocksteady records. This album has much less Big Youth than Screaming Target, and it sounds decidedly less ‘dread’ and less ‘roots’, but it’s just as good as Screaming Target if not better, and well worth a listen. Unsurprisingly, there’s something in here for everyone.

My picks: Shaft, Revolution Come, Youth Rock, One Day Soon, Since I Fell For You
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