One of reggae’s earliest global breakthroughs arrived in 1971 when the duo Dave & Ansel Collins scored an international hit with “Double Barrel.” Few could have predicted the track’s improbable trajectory: it climbed to the summit of the British pop listings and reached number 22 on the American pop charts, even though most U.S. listeners remained unaware that the pair originated in Jamaica. The record opened with a burst of heavily echoed, largely unintelligible self-praise—the only phrase that emerged clearly being “I am the magnificent!”—before settling into a crisp rocksteady rhythm driven by tinkling piano figures and swelling organ chords. Additional layers of reverberant, playful boasts and calls to “work!” kept the momentum high until a short harmonic detour borrowed the chord sequence of Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay.”
Sustaining that momentum proved impossible; outside Britain the duo registered only this solitary U.S. success, though they returned to the British Top Ten with the comparatively modest follow-up “Monkey Spanner.” Every song they released was written and produced by Winston Riley. The vocalist Dave Collins, better known professionally as Dave Barker, had already logged time as a session singer at Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Black Ark Recording Studio during the late 1960s and early 1970s, where he generated several hits under his own name. Keyboardist Ansel Collins, meanwhile, performed with both the Upsetters and Jimmy Cliff’s backing band and maintained a busy career as a studio musician, appearing on recordings by Black Uhuru, the Mighty Diamonds, Barrington Levy, and numerous other artists.
