Bunny "Striker" Lee - Bunny 'Striker' Lee Story [Box Set] (CD)

All Music Guide

With four CDs and over 100 tracks, The Bunny "Striker" Lee Story is absolutely overwhelming, such a profusion of music that one barely knows where to start. The accompanying booklet is a good place, and provides an excellent biography of this crucial Jamaican producer, written by Penny Reel in conjunction with Lee himself, as well as a wealth of photographs. Excellent background for the music, but, unfortunately, not the set itself. Even the erudite Reel is at times left reeling by the eccentric sequencing, which wanders willynilly through the years, but at least makes a valiant attempt to bring together versions vocal, instrumental, and DJ cuts. Reel's efforts, however, are thoroughly undermined by the booklet's lay out, which eschews paragraphs, making it all the more difficult to follow. But forget all that, and just immerse one's self in the music.There's hits galore, including Lee's earliest Roy Shirley's "Music Fell, a slew of rocksteady classics from a stable of magnificent vo...calists led by The Uniques, and more crucial cuts from the reggae age. Lee reached an apotheosis in the mid Seventies, his two biggest singers Johnnie Clarke and Cornel Campbell battled for supremacy, while simultaneously his DJs toasted their way to the top. Lee held on through the end of the decade, but by the early Eighties his output was dwindling.The set contains perhaps a tad too many spoilers quick cash in versions of other producers's hits, not quite enough attention is paid to the DJs (notable omissions include Prince Jazzbo and Doctor Alimantado), and most amazing of all, only a single instrumental from Lee's crack studio band The Aggrovators is featured, and they, bizarrely, aren't even mentioned in the booklet. Read more Less