The ever-mysterious Vivian Jackson, known professionally as Yabby You, was along with Lee “Scratch” Perry, King Tubby (a frequent collaborator), Augustus Pablo, Culture and Burning Spear, one of the prime architects of deep roots reggae and dub music in the Seventies. These and other roots reggae artists created music that profoundly impacted the development of punk rock, electronica/EDM, and hip-hop. But while those artists all achieved notable international notoriety, Vivian “Yabby You” Jackson remained obscure. Most of the music released during Yabby You’s lifetime was issued in small quantities on his own label or Grove Music in the UK and he rarely performed live. However, various re-issues, including the acclaimed 3-CD box set Dread Prophecy issued by Shanachie Entertainment in 2015, have made the case that Yabby You created some of the greatest and most profound reggae ever released. Now, by popular demand, some of the finest rarities from the box set will be released by Shanachie on vinyl LP as Dread Prophecy Crucial Cuts!! on December 6, 2024.
“Yabby You was one of the founding members of roots reggae. He was one of the first to do roots reggae, working with King Tubby and he kept the dub roots thing going.” -Sly Dunbar
The anticipated Dread Prophecy Crucial Cuts!! LP features ten-tracks from the second disc of the Dread Prophecy box set. The tracks are a mix of Yabby You solo recordings, Yabby You productions of other artists including his in-house aggregation The Prophets, and dub mixes. Four of the tracks are extended mixes complete with vocal and dub sections. Highlights include Michael Prophet’s powerful “Love & Unity/Mash Down Rome,” Yabby You’s all-too-relevant rarity “This Economical Crisis” and the King Tubby-mixed dub version of Patrick Andy’s “Love Of A Woman,” which is released on vinyl here for the first time. Though Yabby You prided himself on producing original rhythms for most of his work, the pristine instrumental “Love In Zimba” features such iconic musicians as Earl “Chinna” Smith and Tommy McCook soloing over the classic “Shenk-I-Shek” reggae rhythm.
“…Vivian Jackson emerges from Marley’s shadow as earthy and astute in the studio, on his own…”– Rolling Stone Magazine
In 1953 a seven year-old boy in Jamaica, moved by the stories of Jesus he heard in church, decided that when he was 12 he would emulate Jesus by wandering the land seeking wisdom from learned men. When he turned 12 years old, this determined boy, Vivian Jackson, did just that, leaving home to live amongst the various religious sects. A strange chain of events, marked by extreme poverty and illness resulting in crippling arthritis, culminated in a spiritual revelation that inspired young Jackson, in his twenties, to record a haunting hymn over a powerful bassline; it became an improbable hit. Now known as Yabby You, he went on to become a “foundational” roots reggae artist, whose impact on the development of the roots reggae style that conquered the world.
“I first heard Yabby You’s music in 1977,” says Shanachie GM Randall Grass. “It was extremely difficult to obtain but what I heard was transformative. When I went to Jamaica for the first time in 1982, I mentioned to the late Hugh Mundell that I wished I could meet Yabby You, thinking that was an impossible dream. The next day there was a knock on my hotel room door and in came Hugh with Yabby You on crutches behind him. That meeting, marked by much reasoning and quotation of Bible verses, led to the first release by Shanachie of Yabby’s music in America. I last visited him at his home in Jamaica a couple years before his death. When he died I felt a personal mission to preserve and re-present his great musical legacy.” Yabby You passed away in 2010 after suffering a stroke, at the age of 64, ending one of the most unusual and profound odysseys of any recording artist–an “outsider” artist if there ever was one. Yabby You’s legacy endures on Dread Prophecy Crucial Cuts!!“
