Dillinger - Steppin' Out of Babylon (Anniversary Edition Vinyl)

Anniversary Edition Black Vinyl LP

Steppin' Out of Babylon is Charly Records' career overview of Dillinger, issued to mark his 50 years in music, and its cover bills him as the Mighty Dillinger. This anniversary edition is a single black vinyl LP, catalog number CHARLY800LP, with fourteen tracks running seven to a side. The distributor lists the audio as remastered.

Charly's notes place Dillinger, born Lester Randal Bullock, in reggae's second wave of deejays in the mid-1970s, bridging the roots movement and the birth of dancehall with sharp, conversational rhymes and, as the label puts it, the occasional surprise yodel. The collection opens with "Cocaine in My Brain", the song that made his name internationally.

That song first appeared in 1976 as "Cokane in My Brain" on CB 200, his Island Records album produced by Joseph "Jo Jo" Hoo Kim at Channel One in Kingston, and as a single it reached No. 1 in the Netherlands, No. 2 in Belgium and No. 35 in Germany. "Plantation Heights" is also a CB 200 title; the players on that album included Sly Dunbar, Earl "Chinna" Smith, Ansel Collins and Tommy McCook. Side B carries "Melting Pot" with The Techniques.

Born in Kingston in 1953, Dillinger began deejaying on sound systems in 1971 as Dennis Alcapone Jr. Lee "Scratch" Perry renamed him after the gangster John Dillinger and released his first single, "Dub Organizer". By 1974 and 1975 he was recording prolifically for producers including Coxsone Dodd, with albums such as Ready Natty Dreadie. He turned to producing other artists in the 1980s, returned to recording in the early 1990s with his own Scandal Bag label, and kept touring internationally, performing with Yellowman in 2014.

Tracklist

Side A

1. Cocaine in My Brain
2. Raggnum Piser
3. Natty Dread a the Ruler
4. The Fool and His Money
5. Jah Love
6. Answer Mi Question
7. Modern Judas

Side B

8. Warrior
9. Flat Foot Hustling
10. Plantation Heights
11. Cup of Tea
12. Melting Pot (with The Techniques)
13. Killer Man Jaro
14. Fernando Sancho