The blog So Many Records, So Little Time, features a nice reminiscence of the classic hymn-like tune Conscious Man by Jamaican vocal trio The Jolly Brothers. The story sounds all very believable. However, the mess that always was the Jamaican record industry isn't helped by producing educated guesses about who offered what record company what music.
Thanks to a few good import stores in Stockholm Sweden where I lived at that time, I grabbed a UK copy of said tune on the extremely short-lived Magnum label already in 1977; a label which folded after just three LP releases and few singles.
The information to be gleaned from the original UK relase of this mellow tune shows demon producer Lee Perry (hiding from view in the credits) did not offer the song to United Artists, as indicated in the above link (where you can also see the 1978 reissue). Apparently, UA acquired simply the folded Magnum Records' catalogue.
The complexity is even worse than that blogger imagined since according to the above label it had already been licensed from the Seven Leaves Records company - which paradoxically I have never seen releasing anything until the 80s!
No wonder every reggae discography site is replete with misinformation, gross misinformation. Piecing the history of reggae's golden years today may actually not be worth it. So little time, so many other things to learn.
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