Double 12″ Spin #82 – Tony Tuff & Ronald Douglas / Jolly Brothers –

A. Tony Tuff – Stop My Roaming
B. Ronald Douglas – Roaming In Style
Label: TCD – TCD.D.004

More info @ Discogs

Tony Tuff, born Winston Anthony Morris, passed on April 20, 2024, at Kingston Public Hospital. He was 69. And with him, reggae lost one of those voices that carried the music straight out of the roots era and into rub-a-dub, right through the first wave of dancehall.

He got his start in 1969 as one third of The African Brothers, standing alongside Sugar Minott and Derrick “Bubbles” Howard. The trio came out of Trench Town, and that’s exactly where Tuff built his foundation as a songwriter, long before the group split in the mid-1970s and each man scattered off on his own path. Minott went on to build his empire through Youthman Promotion. Tuff went solo instead, moving through some of the sharpest production rooms the island had to offer. He voiced sides for Minott himself, for Niney the Observer, for Alvin Ranglin, and eventually for Henry “Junjo” Lawes, the man running the Volcano label and sound.

That Volcano run is where Tuff really made his mark. Water Pumpee and Come Fe Mash It turned into staples, the kind of tunes that still buss out at dances decades on. Come Fe Mash It lent its title to Tuff’s 1983 album for Junjo too, dropped right in the middle of the label’s strongest run, when Yellowman, Barrington Levy and Linval Thompson were all riding with that same camp. Nobody Like You closed out the stretch, another cut fans still hold onto.

His voice never strained. Smooth, melodic, carrying a lightness that made him easy to love even when what he sang about wasn’t light at all. That’s the thing about Tuff, foundation phrasing laid over rub-a-dub riddims, and it’s a big part of why he mattered as a bridge between eras rather than just a name tied to one moment.

Things quieted down through the ’90s, same as they did for plenty of singers once the sound swung hard toward digital. But Tuff never fully stepped away. He came back with Hit & Run in 2001 and How Long in 2006, and kept touring through it all, playing stages across Europe, Canada and the US for a following that never let go of him.

Now, to the actual record on the turntable this time round. Side A carries the roots tune Stop My Roaming, in an extended mix. Flip it over and you land on the deejay version credited to Ronald Douglas, a name that honestly means nothing on its own. But sit with it a while and it becomes pretty clear, this is almost certainly an alias for deejay U Brown. The Japanese re-release backs that up too, crediting U Brown as the deejay outright.

As for dating this one, the single shows up on Dub Vendor’s list of bestselling disco singles from May 1979, which at least locks the release down to that year with real certainty. The label behind it, TCD, was a small UK outfit with close ties to Black Slate. TCD never put out much though. This was very much a small, band-run label doing its own thing.

A. Jolly Brothers – Have A Little Faith
B. Jolly Brothers – Right Before My Eyes
Label: Seven Leaves Records – SL 008

More info @ Discogs

And now for the other half of this Double 12″, the Jolly Brothers, with Lee Perry standing behind the desk. The Jolly Brothers were a vocal trio out of Hellshire Beach in St. Catherine, built around Winston Edwards, Willis Gordon and Clevian Lewis. Lennox Miller and Hendrick Nicholson also get credited as part of the lineup at different points, which tracks with how these Jamaican vocal groups tended to work, members drifting in and out depending on the session.

Their first outing was at Perry’s Black Ark, where they cut Conscious Man and Colour. Sources can’t agree whether that was late 1977 or 1978, so we won’t pretend to settle it here. The singles moved well enough that Ballistic came calling for a full album. Sessions wrapped, and then Perry just sat on the tapes. No clear reason given anywhere. Anyone who’s followed his career won’t find that strange at all, Scratch worked in mysterious ways and that’s putting it mildly.

The album didn’t surface until 1992, when Perry handed the tapes over to a man named Tony George Owens, who put it out on his own label, Seven Leaves. Titled Conscious Man, it even carries the misspelling Concious Man right there on the original sleeve. It’s since been reissued twice.

That’s not the only version of this story though. Back in 1979, Ballistic actually released a separate album called Consciousness, with most of its six or so tracks handled by Prince Jammy. Conscious Man opened that record too, pulled straight from the Black Ark session and still wearing its original “Tony J.” production credit, while Jammy built out the rest of the album with discomix material cut at Harry J’s and Channel One. As far as anyone’s been able to trace, the Jolly Brothers never went back into a studio after that. The group split, and that was that.

Both tunes on this particular 12″ ended up back on the album Conscious Man eventually. Have A Little Faith sits there as a regular album track, while Right Before My Eyes got tacked on as a bonus cut on the later reissues.