| Heart of the Congos | ||||
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| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | 1977 | |||
| Recorded | 1976–1977, Black Ark, Kingston, Jamaica | |||
| Genre | Roots reggae | |||
| Length | 44:38 | |||
| Label | Black Art | |||
| Producer | Lee Perry | |||
| The Congos chronology | ||||
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Heart of the Congos is a roots reggae album by the Congos, produced by Lee "Scratch" Perry at his Black Ark studio with a studio band including Boris Gardiner on bass and Ernest Ranglin on guitar. The album was released in 1977. It is noted as being one of Perry's masterpiece productions of the Black Ark era.
The first issue of the LP in Jamaica was a very limited release said to consist of only several hundred copies. It was remastered using the original Black Ark quarter inch master tapes with the exception of 'At The Feast' and re-released in 1996 on the record label Blood and Fire, run by Steve Barrow, T Elwing, and Mick Hucknall, with assistance on the ground provided by Andrea Lewis. The original mix of the album was not officially re-issued on either LP or CD until 2017's 40th Anniversary Edition (although an 'unofficial' CD release, sourced from the original LP, was released in 2004 by CORN-FED Productions, based in Amsterdam). Until 2017, all editions subsequent to the first Jamaica release feature a second, substantially different, mix by Lee Perry. The 40th Anniversary Edition includes both mixes of the album, as well as ten bonus tracks.