Still going strong in 2023, pioneering Jamaican singer Owen Gray was one of the first local artists to get on record in the late 1950s and one of the first to top the local charts when they were introduced back in 1959. He was also the very first Jamaican popular vocalist to release an album comprising R&B and pop rather than the island’s earlier indigenous music mento or calypso. “Owen Gray Sings” was a landmark release in the history of what became reggae and also in the history of Island Records’ founder Chris Blackwell, who produced it in the days before Island existed. The album features here in its entirety in this Jasmine collection of early Owen – for the first time on CD, we believe – along with more than a dozen other examples of his work for other notable Jamaican producers of the pre-Ska era, among them Simeon ‘Little Wonder’ Smith, Clement ‘Sir Coxson’ Dodd and Prince Buster, all of them fine examples of how rapidly the Jamaican recording business was evolving in its early years. Jamaican popular music didn’t really have a name in these times, but in the UK it became known as ‘Blue Beat’ after the record label on which so much of it was released between 1960 and 1967. Here on “Dancing On The Beach” are many of the very best of Owen’s blue beat-era recordings presented, as with all Jasmine CDs, in the highest possible audio quality with expert remastering and copious annotation. There’s plenty more to compile if a second volume is warranted.