Along with Ellis’s Sunday Coming for Coxsone Records, Mr. Soul of Jamaicaestablished the rocksteady pioneer as one of the Caribbean island’s premier soul artists. Though the album features a few original compositions, it’s Ellis’s tackling of American R&B tunes that proved timeless.
Included was “You Make Me Happy,” a cover of Brenda Holloway’s “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” that became classic enough to warrant a mid-’70s re-edit with U-Roy protégé Ranking Trevor’s rub-a-dubs. Likewise, Ellis cut one of the definitive Jamaican versions of Johnnie Taylor’s 1966 hit for Stax Records, “Ain’t That Loving You (For More Reasons Than One).”
However, few of Ellis’s R&B recordings top his version of Jr. Walker’s “What Does It Take (To Win Your Love),” a song whose own history was serendipitous before ever landing at Duke Reid’s Bond Street studio.
 
The song was originally cowritten and produced by Harvey Fuqua for the Motown subsidiary Soul. Walker thought it would make a strong single, but, as lore has it, Motown didn’t see the light until radio DJs began playing the song off of the LP. Once the label gave it a proper single release, it ended up becoming Walker’s biggest hit with the All-Stars.