Yeah, I'll agree with JH, in that dub is going to provide you with most of the instrumental reggae to be had. If it's to your tastes (it's not to everyone's), there's a lot of really great instrumental 1st wave ska out there like The Skatalites and some of Don Drummond's earlier stuff. I've recommended it in other threads recently, but a great instrumental dub album is Augustus Pablo's King Tubby Meets the Rockers Uptown. Ernest Ranglin's Below the Bassline is a fairly reputable attempt at fusing reggae and jazz, but I personally think it sounds like someone made a sterile sounding smooth jazz album of reggae covers. The Charlie Hunter Quartet took Bob Marley's Natty Dread album and swung the whole thing out as a jazz piece. It's pretty damn amazing, if you get an itch to check out a jazz interpretation of a classic roots reggae album.
|