For this past week’s show, we began with two sets of mid-tempo ska, beginning with a spectacular one from Henry Buckley himself on his own Merritone label entitled, “Reap What You Sew.” Afterwards, in the second set of ska, we presented the amazing “Run Rudies Run” from Lee Perry and the Gaylads.

After the first two sets, we jumped into the mento with “Tongue Tied Mopsie” from The Wrigglers on the Kalypso label. And then to transition into the spotlight on Horace Faith, we shared an extended set of rocksteady, beginning with a too cool Prince Buster track named “Sweet Beat.”

Cover for 7″ of Black Pearl

To start the second half of the show, we featured a memorial spotlight on Horace Faith, who passed away on March 8, 2015.

Unfortunately, we don’t know too much about Horace’s bio. We do know he was born as Horace Smith in Jamaica, but given his extensive recording for English labels and a small tidbit shared with us on an annotated episode of Top of the Pops, we know that he immigrated to England as a young man and spent a good chunk of his music career there.

Faith’s career is an interesting one; he recorded lots and lots of covers in reggae and soul but with very lush arrangements. We presented all of his best work in this memorial retrospective on Faith, including his major hit, “Black Pearl.”

“Black Pearl” is a cover of the song with the same title by Sonny & The Checkmates, and with this cover, Horace Faith gained quite a bit of popularity. It reached #13 on the U.S. Billboard top 100 and #13 on the UK singles chart as well.

The spotlight included both reggae and soul cuts from Horace Faith, all of which had beautiful and lavish compositions.

Listen to the spotlight and the full program HERE.

Enjoy! The archive will be available until 4/21/2015.