"Simmer Down" — The Wailers

"Simmer Down," recorded at Studio One in 1963-64, was the Wailers' debut single and a number-one Jamaican hit - the record that established Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer as a serious commercial act years before international fame, cut with the same Studio One session musicians who would later become the Skatalites. Bradley pairs it with Alton Ellis's earlier 1963 "Dance Crasher" as evidence musicians were pleading against rising street violence before rocksteady existed as a named style, pleas he suggests may have had some real effect, since the worst rude-boy disorder did not peak until 1966.