Tell It to Them Roots Dread

Recorded in Lloyd Barnes’s Wackie’s House of Music setup in the Bronx as part of the 1977 Creation Dub sessions, with John Clarke supplying the sole vocal feature over a Bullwackie’s All Stars backing track. The album’s personnel notes place the core musicians as Allah, Clive Hunt, and Jerry Harris, with Sel Wheeler and Roy Robertson also contributing. It was the lone vocal track on an otherwise instrumental dub album, and it gave Creation Dub its most direct roots-chants moment. Contemporary and reissue writeups treat the album as a key early Wackies statement and one of Barnes’s most distinctive productions. The track remains a touchstone for collectors of Bronx roots dub and for later Wackies reissue culture, where Creation Dub has stayed in circulation. It also preserves John Clarke’s voice in one of the label’s most admired recordings, keeping the song active in reggae archival and streaming catalogs.