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Treasure Isle

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Arthur "Duke" Reid's studio above his liquor store at 33 Bond Street, Kingston, and the label of the same name. If Studio One owned ska, Treasure Isle owned rocksteady: from 1966 Reid's productions with Alton Ellis, the Techniques, the Paragons, Phyllis Dillon and John Holt defined the slower, sweeter, bass-forward form, and those rhythms became a second foundation catalogue — the basis of countless later versions, not least through U-Roy toasting over them in 1970.

Melodians singer Brent Dowe recalled Duke Reid running an unusually hands-on studio: a speaker wired through to his liquor-store office let him monitor every take while doing other business, and he would reportedly run upstairs shouting corrections the moment something sounded wrong. Dowe also credited Reid as first to deliberately lengthen recordings once rocksteady's slower tempo allowed it, from roughly 2:20 ska cuts to three- or four-minute rocksteady tracks.

A between-takes tape fragment on the compilation "Ska after Ska after Ska", titled "Duke Speaks", preserves Reid's own voice mid-session demanding "plenty more bass and drum".

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Sources
Lloyd Bradley, Bass Culture (2000/2013), chapter 8.

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Discogs — Treasure Isle label page

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Clickable Discogs source URL for label/catalogue verification; external reference only.

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Interview: Jackie Jackson talks Treasure Isle

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United Reggae interview archive.

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