Trojan Records: How Reggae Reached Producers via London

A London label for Kingston's music

Trojan was set up in 1968 by Lee Gopthal, whose record distribution business served Britain's Caribbean communities, initially with Chris Blackwell of Island Records. The name came from the Trojan truck used by Kingston producer Duke Reid to carry his sound system. Rather than recording its own artists, Trojan licensed tracks from Jamaican producers and released them under a web of sublabels, many dedicated to a single producer.

Its timing was perfect. Rocksteady was turning into early reggae, Britain's skinhead and mod youth culture had adopted the music, and Trojan's singles crossed into the national charts. Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff, Bob and Marcia, Dave and Ansel Collins with "Double Barrel" and the Upsetters with "Return of Django" all became hits in the UK around 1969 to 1971.

Tighten Up and the budget album

Trojan's smartest move was the Tighten Up compilation series: cheap albums gathering a dozen singles, sold for far less than a normal LP. They sold in enormous numbers and introduced listeners to dozens of artists at once. The model, cheap compilations of licensed singles, is also why Trojan's catalogue is so wide: thousands of tracks by artists who might only have recorded a handful of songs.

The original company went under in the mid-70s and the name and catalogue passed through several owners, but the archive survived and has been reissued again and again, most visibly through the Trojan box set series of the 2000s.

The producers behind it

• •Duke Reid (Treasure Isle): smooth rocksteady and early toasting
• •Lee "Scratch" Perry (the Upsetters): eccentric, heavy, experimental from the start
• •Bunny Lee: prolific, and a pioneer of the version and dub B-side
• •Joe Gibbs: hits, deejays and some of the earliest dub albums
• •Leslie Kong (Beverley's): Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff and early Bob Marley recordings

Why it matters for samplers

Jamaican singles were built for sound systems, and many came with an instrumental "version" on the B-side: the same rhythm track without the vocal, sometimes with effects added. That habit grew into dub. For producers it means clean drum and bass grooves, organ skanks and horn lines on thousands of records, often with no vocal at all.

• •Riddims: the same backing track was reused across many songs, so one great rhythm can lead you to a dozen versions with different textures.
• •Organ and piano skanks on the offbeat are easy to chop into a groove.
• •Dub versions drop instruments in and out, giving you isolated drums and bass for free.
• •Pitch with care: reggae tempos are slow, and pitching up much more than a few semitones makes the bass thin.

Records to start with

• •Various: Tighten Up, Vol. 2 (1969)
• •The Upsetters: Return of Django (1969)
• •Dave and Ansel Collins: Double Barrel (1971)
• •Toots and the Maytals: Funky Kingston (1973)
• •Various: the Trojan box sets on dub, rocksteady and skinhead reggae (2000s)
• •Lee Perry productions on the Upsetter label, 1969–1974

Dig reggae on CrateDrop

Filter to Reggae with the style set to Rocksteady, Roots Reggae or Dub, and the years to 1967–1979. Setting the country to UK surfaces the British pressings that Trojan and its rivals put out; setting it to Jamaica gets you the original Kingston singles.