DECEMBER 2024 ISSUE
A sneaky peek of just some of what is in the December 2024 issue – OUT NOW!
SY SMITH
All things considered it’s been something of a tumultuous year for Sy Smith. It had started out so brightly too: her sixth album, Until We Meet Again, launched in January to widespread approval, earning, amongst other things, not only a placement within these pages as Soul Album Of The Month, but a heavy hint that the Zo!/Tall Black Guy produced set might turn out to be the best thing we’d hear all year. [And so it proved.] Then, in April, Sy’s life took a darker turn. A routine mammogram revealed she had some early signs of breast cancer – specifically Ductal Carcinoma In Situ [DCI], stage zero – a diagnosis confirmed six weeks later by biopsy. Options for treatment were a lumpectomy and a course of radiation or a mastectomy and reconstruction without the radiation. Sy favoured the latter and at the end of July underwent two bouts of surgery to deal with the problem.
One month later she was on stage at the Jazz Café in Camden…
SIR LLOYD
This year, UK reggae producer, soundman, promoter and radio presenter Sir Lloyd celebrated his 45th anniversary. As a result of his time in the business, he can lay claim to being the only record producer to have UK Top 100 hits in three different genres, and for heralding the arrival of a golden age in UK reggae and dancehall with his epic trio of Live At DSYC albums – the series that introduced the likes of Maxi Priest, Philip Levi and Tippa Irie to a wider audience. He produced the debut singles of Tippa and Sandra Cross; put Horseman on the map with the unforgettable Horse Move and will forever be remembered for classic lovers rock hits by Paulette Tajah, Don Ricardo, Me And You and Gilroy Sidden.
Like other veteran soundmen, he’s always appreciated a variety of styles beyond reggae…
LUCKY DUBE
Lucky Dube was among the first African artists to popularise reggae on that continent and Prisoner, which won several awards in his native South Africa, was the album that did most to underpin his status as Africa’s rightful heir to Jamaican legends such as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Jimmy Cliff. It’s only fitting that Shanachie should release a special vinyl edition of it in the year that the dreadlocked Rastaman from the Eastern Transvaal would have turned 60. Prisoner serves as a timely reminder of what we’ve been missing since his death in 2007.
Prisoner was first released in 1989, amidst an outpouring of gun lyrics and slackness, delivered over stripped-down dancehall rhythms…
DORADO RECORDS
Here is a Soho story from 1997. It is about legends rather than celebrity. An American guitarist-vocalist and his Midas Touch producer are not so much breezin’ into a building in the central London hub – then something of a cultural Mecca – as catching their breath on the stairs, far from the madding i-Phone.
“I had a great space on the top floor, four flights… no elevator, though. George Benson took a rest on each floor when Tommy Lipuma brought him up the year before. Those were great times.”