ONE LOVE: REGGAE: Carter Van Pelt: DJ/Founder - Coney Island Reggae

“I'll give you a little context as well. So, the record I picked out is called “Cheating" by Earl Sixteen, which is a Lee Scratch Perry production, and it was recorded in 1978 I think.  

The reason I picked this particular 45 is because I first went to Jamaica in 1996 - and at the time I had a pretty healthy obsession with Jamaican music. But like a lot of Americans who were into music - records, CDs - we were focused on LP's. So I had a lot of reggae LP's, and a good handle on the music at the time, I mean probably ten years worth of interest, from teenage years into my mid-twenties at that point. But I wasn't a 45 collector but I go to Jamaica and I was introduced by Ralph Smith to a sound man in Belmont, which is in Western Jamaica.  

And this is right across the street from where Peter Tosh was from. And this area sound man, KD - I can't remember his right name, but people in the region knew him because he had a club and he was just a big guy in music in the area.  

He showed me all the stuff he had and he sold me some records for - they were ridiculously cheap prices at the time, and I didn't even know about the extent that there was this collectors market for records, it was just music to me. 

And so I got a stack, you know, of records like this out of [his collection]. I bet he had ten thousand records and I went through what I could go through.  

And so I picked out these records and that was for me the beginning of my understanding and interest in Jamaican music as a singles music and the 45 rpm single as the essential medium of the sound system. 

Here I was in the middle of this system that had been operating since the seventies, it was regionally significant and this guy who was just really cool to let me go through and take records out of his collection ‘cos to him he had everything. 

I pulled out a cracked one, and I showed it to him I was like 'this has a crack in it' and he took it and just flung it into the ocean because to him it was just like ah! -you know. 

Any of the records that I got from KD would have been appropriate for this project. 

I picked “Cheating” by Earl Sixteen because I know that, at the ime I had never heard the track. I knew who Earl Sixteen was from albums - it’s a non album track. And it's enchanting, it's innocent, it's a break up lament, you know, it's got all these elements that are pervasive in a good reggae love song. 

And it's produced by Lee Perry so it has a signature [Black Ark] sound. Earl Sixteen as a young singer just couldn't sound better. So of all the records that I have, of all the 45's, I think I must have like eight thousand of my own by now, anytime I see any of the handful from KD I know that's where it started for me. You know and I went on to found an event called Coney Island Reggae On The Boardwalk, which is probably one of the largest, certainly in the United States, the largest allvinyl reggae sound system events, and it's known internationally.  

My foundation in this and where it started - this is just a through-line for me to an event that I started that now has an audience and recognition and everything. An add-on to the story is that I was going through the records the other day and I ran across another copy [of "Cheating"], because I have two copies and this is a different pressing. 

This is stamped 'VP records 170-03 Jamaica Avenue' and what this means is that this is one of the first records that VP pressed and distributed in the United States. So it's the same "Cheating" by Earl Sixteen, but this is the New York version. 

If you look at the matrix number it says VP Records on it, and I wouldn't be surprised if one of my bosses, Chris Chin actually mastered the record. So, you know, it kind of came full circle when I was going through and I found another copy of it. So yeah, that's what I have to say about that!” 

Earl Sixteen: “Cheating” - released 1978 

Coney Island Reggae - Facebook 

Coney Island Reggae on the Boardwalk - TimeOut New York