Neville Grant - Sick And Tired / Black Man's Time - HSRSS-0035

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INTRODUCING TWO LEE PERRY’s CULT TRACKS

NEVILLE GRANT

“SICK AND TIRED”/ “BLACK MAN’S TIME”

SICK AND TIRED is the vocal version of RETURN OF THE DJANGO!

PRESALE ONLY - Official Release September 26, 2025

Catalogue number: HSRSS-0035

RELEASE INFORMATION

• Format: Black 7" vinyl – 45 RPM – Stereo
• Label: Harlem Shuffle Records
• Sleeve: Black paper cover.
• This single gets together two important and best tracks from legendary producer Lee “Scratch” Perry with singer Neville Grant.
• SICK AND TIRED, the vocal version of RETURN OF THE DJANGO), was released in 1973 on Downtown (DT.509) whilst BLACK MAN’S TIME was released in 1972 on the Upsetter label.
• These two tracks are both quite rare and highly collectable today. They are also in our humble opinion the very best of Neville Grant’s recordings and two top Lee Perry’s productions.

ABOUT NEVILLE GRANT

Little is known about Neville Grant. He first started his musical career as a drummer in a church band at Emmanuel Apostolic Church in Kingston, where musical friends remember him as quiet, kind-spirited, and deeply devoted to his faith. In 1972 he stepped into the studio as a singer to record the great “Black Man’s Time” that instantly became a roots reggae classic and his breakthrough single “Sick And Tired” for Downtown in 1973, both featured on our single.

Across a brief run he recorded indifferent songs for labels like Hot Rod (“Standing In The Rain,” 1972), Quaking (“Bewildered,” 1973), and D.E.B. Music (“Lady Love” / “Pretty Looks”), even teaming with producer Sidney Crooks from The Pioneers on “Harry Hippie.”

As a drummer, he collaborated on a few albums before totally disappearing:

Carl Malcolm - Tonight! [1978]

Dave Barker & Ansel Collins - Dave & Ansil Collins In Toronto [1974]

Joe Gibbs & Professionals - African Dub Chapter 4 [1979]

Junior Delgado - Taste Of The Young Heart [1979]

Leroy Brown - Prayer Of Peace [1976]

Lloyd Parks - Officially [1972]

Lloyd Parks - Time A Go Dread [197?]

… And that is all we know about Neville Grant.

ABOUT LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY

Rainford Hugh “Lee Scratch” Perry was born on 20 March 1936 in Kendal, Hanover, Jamaica, the 3^rd child of Henry Perry and Ina Davies from whom he inherited deep Yoruba spiritual traditions…

At fifteen, he left school to work as a labourer helping building Negril’s first road before a mystical vision of stones guided him to Kingston where he apprenticed as a record seller for Clement “Coxsone” Dodd. He moved up and soon recorded nearly thirty tracks at Studio One.

After financial and creative clashes, he moved to Joe Gibbs’s Amalgamated Records, refining his craft but still chafing at constraints. After more financial and creative clashes, he founded the Upsetter Records label and in 1968 released “People Funny Boy,” which was a musical dig at Gibbs and catalysed the shift from Rocksteady to Reggae.

From 1968 to 1972, he recorded intensively with his studio band the Upsetter and released lots of records. Many of his tracks were big hits in Jamaica and in the UK—his instrumental “The Return of Django” even made the British top five in 1969.

He quickly became famous for his creative studio techniques and his eccentric personality.

Perry produced several early songs and albums for Bob Marley and the Wailers, including the albums Soul Rebels and Soul Revolution in the early 1970s.

Perry’s sonic experiments with Dub unveiled on “Blackboard Jungle Dub,” where echo chambers became instruments. His back yard Black Ark Studio, built in 1973, served as a four‐track laboratory for Dub and revolutionary productions. There he crafted dub landmarks such as “Super Ape,” “Disco Devil,” and the evocative “Roast Fish & Cornbread.” He produced iconic Reggae tracks, including Junior Murvin’s “Police and Thieves” and Max Romeo’s “Chase the Devil.”

Perry’s eccentric genius attracted The Heptones, The Congos, and Delroy Wilson to his sessions. In the late ’70s, he produced the music for two Linda McCartney tracks, merging rock and reggae. Keith Richards joined Perry on “Book of Moses” and other tracks… UK punk icons The Clash cut their own “Police and Thieves,” influenced by Perry’s style, while the Beastie Boys featured him on “Dr. Lee, PhD.” Just to name a few.

Jamaica honoured him with the Order of Distinction for his transformative contributions to music and culture. Lee “Scratch” Perry passed away on 29 August 2021, leaving a legacy of sonic alchemy that forever reshaped Jamaican music and beyond.

A SIDE: SICK AND Tired

• Title: Sick And Tired
• Artist: Neville Grant
• Genre: early Reggae
• Produced by: Lee “Scratch” Perry
• Original release: 1973 on Downtown (DT.509)

SICK AND TIRED pairs Neville Grant’s fiery vocals against marital woes with Perry’s signature Upsetter instrumental THE RETURN OF DJANGO!

This cult track is in fact the reunion of two distinct and very different covers: the music taken directly from the Perry’s “RETURN OF DJANGO”, the massive early 1969 reggae instrumental hit. And the lyrics taken entirely from a R’n’B song written and recorded by Kenner in 1957, which was made into a hit by Fats Domino in 1958. The whole track actually sounds very much like a classic gritty RnB song. And it works wonderfully…

Released almost four years after the original, it was issued on the Downtown imprint in 1973.  

Original pressings of this early Reggae gem remain nearly impossible to find…

B SIDE: BLACK MAN’S TIME

• Title: Black Man’s Time
• Artist: Neville Grant
• Genre: early Roots Reggae
• Produced by: Lee “Scratch” Perry
• Original release: 1972 on Upsetter

Predating the full bloom of the Black Ark sound, “Black Man’s Time” delivers a militant message of self-empowerment against inequality over a deep, rolling bassline, a blueprint for roots reggae to come. Original Jamaican pressings on Upsetter command high prices…

Mixing message lyrics with nursery rhyme tunes may be eccentric, but Lee Perry had merged the serious with the surreal many times before starting with its very first hit “People Funny Boy” in 1968 with the sampling of a baby crying over one of the very first Reggae rhythm.

He achieved a rare pinnacle though with 1973’s “Black Man’s Time,” where a lazy, simmering one-drop riddim is punctuated by brass blasting “Pop Goes the Weasel”! The song is a classic nursery rhyme, with the first known recording appearing in the United States in the 1850s. 

The languorous groove creates a great backdrop for Neville Grant’s resolute demands for justice. “Why don’t you share the wealth and share it right?” he asks, calling out Jamaica’s elite. “We’ve been starving too long, it’s time we had a bite,” he warns insistently. Though the lyrics bear Perry’s signature wit and subversion, Grant’s sincerity makes each line land with undeniable weight.

This surreal protest anthem struck a chord at home and abroad securing its place early in roots-reggae history.