Various Artists Essiebons Special 1973 - 1984 Vinyl LP 2021
1. Ernest Honny - Kofi Psych
2. Joe Meah - Dee Mmaa Pe
3. Ck Mann & His Carousel 7 - Yeaba
4. Ansa - Santrofi
5. Seaboy & Nyame Bekyere - Tinitini
6. Joe Meah - Ahwene Pa Nkasa
7. Ernest Honny - Ernest Special
8. Seaboy - Africa
9. Nyame Bekyere - Medley
10. Ernest Honny - Say The Truth
11. Black Masters Band - Wonnin A Bisa
12. Sawaaba Soundz - Egye Tu Gbe
13. Ck Mann Big Band - Fa W‘Akoma Ma Me
14. Ernest Honny - Odo Mframa
For most of the 1970s, legendary Ghanaian producer Dick Essilfie-Bondzie's Dix and Essiebons labels were synonymous with the best in modern highlife, and his roster was a who's-who of highlife legends. C.K. Mann, Gyedu Blay Ambolley, Kofi Papa Yankson, Ernest Honny, Rob 'Roy' Raindorf and Ebo Taylor all released some of their greatest music under the Essiebons banner.
Yet Essilfie-Bondzie had been destined for a very different career. Born in Apam and raised in Accra, he was sent to business school in London at the age of twenty, and returned to the security of a government job in Ghana. But his passion for music, inspired by the sounds of Accra's highlife scene, had never left him, and in 1967 he figured out a way of combining music and business by opening West Africa's first record pressing plant. The venture, a partnership with the Philips label, was a huge success, attracting business from all over the continent. By the early 1970s Essilfie-Bondzie had left his government job to concentrate on his labels, and by the mid-seventies he was on a hot streak injecting album after album of restless highlife into the bloodstream of the Ghanaian music scene.
Essiebons Special features a selection of obscure workouts from some of the label's heaviest hitters. But in the course of digitising his vast archive of master tapes, Essilfie-Bondzie found a number of Afrobeat and instrumental tracks from the label's mid-70s golden age that, for one reason or another, had never been released, and those songs are also included here for the first time.
Produced in collaboration with Dick Essilfie-Bondzie, who sadly passed away shortly before its completion, this collection stands as testament to his vast contribution to the world of West African music.