Rarely has a company dominated a country’s pop music like Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle. Alongside its rival Studio One, the Jamaican label was a powerhouse of creativity and talent over nearly three decades, producing hit after hit. It pioneered ska, drove the formation of the style that succeeded it, rock steady, and helped formulate the reggae sound that would conquer the world. This collection charts the history of Jamaican music through the massive, evergreen hits of Treasure Isle.
Look at the titles and, beyond the regularly-covered ‘The Tide Is High’ – now a crowd-pleaser for Atomic Kitten and once a smash for Blondie – probably ‘Carry Go Bring Come’ and perhaps ‘Moonlight Lover’ or ‘Angel Of The Morning’, you might not recognize any of the tracks. But listen to the songs and the familiarity will come flooding back. Snatches heard on the radio or at a dance over the years, songs covered by any number of bands in a homage or even snippets featured on TV adverts or as audio on a documentary or film score. Treasure Isle’s music is like that. It was always thinking away in the background, providing an alternative soundtrack to our lives in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Duke Reid began like many of his later record producer peers as a sound system man. He was soon known by the same name as his rig: the Trojan. Coxsone Dodd, whose Studio One would become the cult label of ska and early reggae, emerged as Reid’s major rival for the attention of Jamaica’s dance crowds at the end of the 1950s. From their competitive ingenuity came ska, an indigenous adaptation of the U.S. R&B that the sound systems played. Both had recruited ‘house’ brands whose expertise with the preferred ‘jump’ sound of New Orleans would eventually lead to a more accented Caribbean style, sung in a distinctly local fashion.
It is Prince Buster, former in the employ of Dodd, who is most credited with inventing ska, but it was Studio One, with The Skatalites, and Treasure Isle, with the likes of Derrick Morgan and later Justin Hinds, who would dominate the charts. Poaching of and double-dealing between the best musicians was rife. As ska’s harvest moon waned, a new slower-paced sound emerged – whether down to dissatisfaction with the limitations of ska, its pace or a particularly draining hot summer for dancers. And if Studio One had pipped Reid over ska, Treasure Isle would dominate the new beat – rocksteady. It helped that Reid recruited sax genius Tommy McCook from Studio One to lead his jazz-schooled Supersonics, the band that would lay down tracks that are still “re-versioned” by today’s dancehall producers. The rolling rhythm of rocksteady was syncopated for dancing but allowed more breathing space than ska, and a host of new vocal groups emerged including The Techniques, The Ethiopians and The Paragons. Soloists like Alton Ellis and Phyllis Dillon also enjoyed years of success.
In the early ‘60s, when UK importers began to feed the clamor for Jamaican tunes, it was only natural that they would name their company in Reid’s honor. Trojan Records is still a vibrant company, still benefiting from the demand for Duke Reid’s vast archive of recordings. Like a river, the Jamaican sound has started fast and wild, taken it easier in its middle period and, in the 1970s, would now cool down even further as reggae emerged as a form that would spread all over the world. Treasure Isle’s delicate vocal sound was best suited to the romantic end of the new market and output from the likes of ex-Paragon John Holt and Joya Landis set the template for what would become known as Lovers’ Rock. However Reid, now in his late Fifties, found it hard to adapt his studio sound to the harsher, more political climate of the mid-‘70s and Treasure Isle ceased to be a major force for new music. He died in 1976.
Rival producer Sonia Pottinger bought out the incredible catalog that he had built up and reinvigorated its marketing, releasing a series of excellent ‘Hottest Hits’ retrospectives. It’s a measure of Reid’s genius that those albums are still very much in demand – and filling dance floors – to this day.

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