Album dossier / 1981

Red

Black Uhuru · Reggae/Roots Reggae

Produced again by the rhythm duo Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (who had already helmed 1980's Sinsemilla), Red was recorded and mixed at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas with the classic Michael Rose/Puma Jones/Duckie Simpson line-up, Sly \& Robbie modernizing the group's roots-reggae foundation with synth-drum textures and dub-informed arrangements. Released just months before Bob Marley's death, it stepped into reggae's global leadership vacuum, landing at No. 3 in NME's Best Albums of 1981 and helping build toward the Grammy Award the band would win for 1983's Anthem, the first year that Best Reggae Album category existed. South Carolina-born Puma Jones, a trained anthropologist who joined the band in the late 1970s, brought socially and religiously charged lyrics and a haunting vocal blend that became one of Red's defining textures before her death from cancer in 1990.