Rocksteady

Rocksteady is in 4/4 at around 80-100 BPM, slowed substantially from ska's 130-plus. The horn section that had dominated ska is reduced or absent; rhythm guitar continues the offbeat skank but at a more relaxed tempo. The signature instrument of rocksteady is the electric bass, which moves to the front of the mix and plays melodic, walking lines that often define the song's hook. Vocals shift from ska's instrumental orientation to extended vocal-led love songs, frequently in soulful three-part harmony (groups like The Heptones, The Paragons, The Techniques). Drums lean on the rim of the snare and use a more open hi-hat pattern.

Rocksteady emerged in Kingston in 1966 as ska tempos slowed and Jamaica's working musicians retooled. The summer of 1966 was unusually hot, and Jamaican music historians widely credit the heat with making fast ska dancing physically uncomfortable. Producer Duke Reid at Treasure Isle dominated rocksteady's commercial peak, recording The Paragons, Alton Ellis, The Techniques, and Phyllis Dillon; rival producers Coxsone Dodd at Studio One and Sonia Pottinger ran parallel hit factories. The form lasted only about two years before further slowing into reggae around 1968. Rocksteady's vocal-group sound resurfaced in the late 1970s UK as the lover's rock subgenre.

Listen for the bass first — in rocksteady the bass is the lead instrument in everything but name, playing a melodic line that often functions as the song's hook. The horn section is much smaller than ska's, sometimes just a single saxophone or trumpet. Vocal groups sing in close harmony, usually in three parts. The drums are quieter and more open than ska's tight snare-driven feel.

Alton Ellis's "Rock Steady" (1966) is the song that gave the genre its name. For an album, the Treasure Isle compilation Hit After Hit After Hit (or any of Trojan Records' rocksteady anthologies) is the standard entry.

Several rocksteady singers — including The Paragons' John Holt — left for the UK in the late 1960s and 70s, where their vocal style became the template for lover's rock, a London-based subgenre that briefly outsold every other reggae style in the UK during the 1980s.