I remem­ber sit­ting alone in my apart­ment, in Brook­lyn in Auck­land one night in the late 1970s, lis­ten­ing to Soon For­ward over and over again, try­ing to work out how one voice could be so achingly beautiful.….

It’s a ques­tion I was, across three decades of almost obses­sive fan­dom, unable to answer. And regard­less of the dark­ness that seemed to envelop and sur­round him, there will likely never be another like it.

A cou­ple of incred­i­ble Jamaican voices since passed, both live in Ja: The very soul­ful Jacob Miller with his take on Marley’s Soul Rebel, and the deep choco­late tones of Den­nis Brown.

And for Willie Mitchell, per­haps the great­est pro­ducer of the early 1970s, two from his finest cre­ation (sorry Al), Ann Pee­bles, who’s voice sim­ply over­whelms me. The first is a raw, live in the stu­dio take, of her best known song, I Can’t Stand The Rain, and the sec­ond is just the audio of what I con­sider to be Willie’s great­est track, I’m Gonna Tear Your Play­house Down, which even sur­vived Paul Young’s assault. RIP.

Owww, this this glorious…JA’s finest voice bar none. It makes me shiver