Scientist Vs Papa Tad's - Allied Dub Selection - LP Vinyl

The Tad Dawkins & Jah Thomas produced dub album “Allied Dub Selection”, featuring dub versions mixed by Scientist and Papa Tad’s aka Tad Dawkins, was released in 1980. At the time of its release, the dub craze had ran its course and not that many dub sets were being released anymore. In 1974-74 the first handful of dub albums appeared, over the next few years followed by hundreds of dub albums as every producer maximized the financial return of his vintage riddims. Dub albums were usually pressed in very small quantities and disappeared quickly. This explains why so many vintage dub albums including this “Allied Dub Selection” are referred to as ‘rare’, which however says nothing about the quality of an album.

Most reggae fans probably only think of Tad Dawkins as the founder and producer of independent record company Tads International Records, while especially the older reggae aficionados will remember him as the one who produced albums from Dennis brown, Gregory Isaacs, Horace Andy, U Brown and Tony Tuff in the 1980s. Most likely only very few will know that he started his career in the 1970s as a singer and that he also played drums and arranged music. As far as we know there’s only one album released that features the vocals of Tad Dawkins, the ultra rare self-produced “Positive & Constructive” which he shared with Earl Moodie. That album was recorded at the Senrab Studios in the US and engineered and mixed by Lloyd “Bullwackie” Barnes & Douglas Levy. As mixing engineer he was involved in albums like Horace Andy’s “Showcase”, Freddie McGregor’s “Across The Border”, Gregory Isaacs’ “Easy” and “All I Have Is Love, Love, Love” and Lloyd Parks’ “Jeans, Jeans”.

“Allied Dub Selection” was the first dub album that featured dub work from Tad Dawkins – the 1984 released “Chapter 1 Dub Mix” by Tad´s Logic Dub Band was a next one. All riddims were recorded laid by the Roots Radics at Channel One Studio and mixed at King Tubby’s. Papa Tad’s part gets started with a spoken intro by an unknown announcer before “Who Dead”, the Roots Radics’ relick of Studio One’s classic riddim behind Dawn Penn’s ever-popular smash “You Don’t Love Me” aka “No, No, No” from 1967, leaps off the speakers.

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