I Admire You Riddim – Unknown Label

I Admire You Riddim comes from Carlton Patterson’s 1974 production for the Unknown Label and runs as a very lean two-track set, pairing Larry Marshall’s I Admire You with the dub cut Watergate Rock. The release is tightly tied to a key moment in early Jamaican dub, with Watergate Rock widely associated with King Tubby’s breakthrough approach to stripping vocals and pushing drum-and-bass to the front. Larry Marshall had already been a respected singer and songwriter by this point, and his original performance here gives the riddim its melodic core while the dub side turns it into something more spacious and heavy. With only those two cuts, the record’s identity is clear: a vocal-side and dub-side version of the same song, shaped around Patterson’s production and the raw, experimental sound that made the era so important.