Description
Label Review.
1979 & 1980 albums.
Our Overview.
From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the name Linval Thompson (born 1954, Kingston, Jamaica) and the Thompson Sounds moniker had serious currency in the world of Jamaican reggae. In addition to his reputation as a vocalist on over a dozen albums, Thompson was the producer of over 40 albums and hundreds of singles by artists including Dennis Brown, Freddie McGregor, Barrington Levy, Eek-A-Mouse, Gregory Isaacs, The Wailing Souls, Triston Palma, Cornell Campbell, Johnny Osbourne, The Viceroys, and Sugar Minott. An examination of his work makes the case that Thompson’s contribution to reggae was essential during the music’s golden era. Linval Thompson and Sugar Minott can be credited as the first reggae singers to exercise significant control as producers of their own work.
Journalist Steve Milne of Full Watts described Linval Thompson as “an artist lauded by knowledgeable reggae-philes and practically unknown by the rest . . . As a singer Thompson is not as well known as some of the artists who attained worldwide success with his help, like Freddie McGregor, Eek-A-Mouse, and (the engineer) Scientist.” Thompson’s relatively low profile is due to two factors. At the height of his singing career he spent his time producing instead of touring, thus missing an essential avenue to name recognition.
Linval Thompson is seldom heard complaining about his lack of notoriety after so many years in the business. He told Jamaican journalist Claude Mills in 1998, “I can’t bawl like some other men do. I tried from pretty early to know the business, and I’ve done well. I made some investments out of it, a house, land. The trick was that I produced a lot of the hit songs that I made, and I produced other artists as well.”
Heres your chance to dip into the magnificent world of this reggae great and feel the sound of summer wash all over you.