BOB MARLEY : SOUL ALMIGHTY - THE FORMATIVE YEARS VOL. 1

  1. Rock Steady
  2. Splish For My Splash
  3. Gonna Get You
  4. Soul Almighty
  5. Bend Down Low
  6. Put It On
  7. Mellow Mood
  8. How Many Times
  9. Fallin' In And Out Of Love
  10. What Goes Around Comes Around
  11. Touch Me
  12. Lonesome Feeling
  13. Nice Time
  14. Stay With Me
  15. You Think I Have No Feelings
  16. What Goes Around Comes Around

Label : JAD Records

Release Date : 1996

Length : 38:58

Review (AllMusic) : Released 15 years after Bob Marley's death, this album of heavily overdubbed Marley juvenalia is suspect, if not entirely without merit. The nine original recordings (four of them previously unreleased) were made by the Wailers in 1967-68. The producers have taken those primitively recorded mono tracks and embedded them in extensive new musical tracks. Their main intention seems to have been to create reggae/hip-hop arrangements on the order of Marley's "Exodus." The result is not unpleasant, but it is odd, with the scratchy vocals peeking out from the state-of-the-art sound. The producers have also added three remixes of the songs for a total of 12 selections in just under 39 minutes. The recordings have not been "restored,'' as the producers put it; they've been altered practically beyond recognition. One way to tell this is to listen to the four original recordings provided on the CD-ROM section, which also includes interviews, graphics, biographical material, copies of speeches by Haile Selassie, links to America Online, a "rasta glossary," a song catalog, merchandise information, and a music video. Actually, the CD-ROM material is much more useful than the audio, and that gives the disc a slightly higher rating.

Review (Explore Entertainment) : This disc represents the first raid on the vaults of producer Danny Sims, who hired Bob Marley as a songwriter-performer from 1967 to 1972. The songs aren’t bad — it’s interesting to hear Marley’s inimitable voice in a propulsive, if wrongheaded, late-’60s soul context — but dancehall remixes of three cuts sound more creepazoid than those ”new” Beatles singles. Pop Soul Almighty – The Formative Years Vol. 1 in your computer and you’ll find a gorgeously designed multimedia section loaded with interviews, photos, a Rasta glossary, a toggle switch that lets you shift from Marley demos to the Sims-ified versions, and — rarest of rarities — a spooky unreleased cut called ”Selassie Is the Chapel” that recasts Elvis’ 1965 hit ”Crying in the Chapel” in a more devotional mode. The entire project exploits Marley’s memory — but the enhanced portion does so with style.