Didn't buy 'Catch A Fire' but 'Stir It Up' is a favourite track. I had already bought an early compilation called 'Put it On it's Rock Steady' and loved the titular track by The Wailers but 'Stir It Up' ran it a close second as favourites go and my friend Leon bought this when it came out and we listened to practically little else for a goodly while! We loved the cover too and I collected Zippo lighters for a while and other smoking paraphernalia too!  I'm gonna put it on! Catcha Fire . . . . . . . in me wire

On this day in music history: April 13, 1973 - “Catch A Fire”, the fifth album by The Wailers is released. Produced by Chris Blackwell, it is recorded at Dynamic Sound, Randy’s Studio in Kingston, Jamaica, and Island Studios in London from May - October 1972. It is the bands’ major label debut on Island Records and includes such classics as “Stir It Up”, “Kinky Reggae”, and “Concrete Jungle”. The first 20,000 copies of the vinyl LP come packaged in a sleeve designed to look like and open and close like a Zippo lighter (designed by Rod Dyer and Bob Weiner). Due to the high cost of producing the original artwork, which also necessitated hand assembly for each jacket, only the initial pressing uses this cover. The album is reissued a year later with different cover art, featuring Marley smoking a spliff. Island Records releases a 2 CD Deluxe Edition of the album in 2001 that features the original Jamaican track listing and without the additional post production overdubs added to the US release. In 2010, the album is remastered again in Japan as a limited edition SHM-CD, with the packaging replicating the original Zippo lighter sleeve in mini-LP form. It is also remastered and reissued on vinyl in 2015, available as an individual 180 gram LP, or as part of the vinyl box set “Bob Marley & The Wailers - Complete Island Recordings.  "Catch A Fire” peaks at number fifty one on the Billboard R&B album chart, and number one hundred seventy one on the Top 200.

thanks to the most excellent Jeff Harris' blog 'Behind The Grooves