Recently, I've been immersed in Lloyd Bradley's history
of reggae music, Bass Culture. There
was one copy on its own in a rather lacklustre remainder bookshop in Romsey and
it's every bit as engrossing as I imagined it would on beating the good
citizens of the Hampshire market town to the purchase. Like all good music
books, in my mind, it's not just about the music but about the whole social,
historical and political context in which it came about. I feel now that I know
the layout of Kingston, Jamaica, as well as I do that of Kingston, Surrey
(where my paternal grandparents, of blessed memory, once lived).
Each chapter of
the unfolding evolution of different riddims has sent me scurrying
for my own documentary evidence to support the thesis. I've spent way too many a
happy hour re-discovering the US-influenced Blue Beat catalogue, all those
frantic jerky ska instrumentals that used to get the Queen Mum hopping around
her palace, Duke Reid's Treasure Isle of rock steady gems, Clement Coxsone
Dodd's incomparable Studio One output, King Tubby's prolific dub experiments,
Augustus Pablo's haunting melodica inna quasi-Eastern style and so on.
Praise JA – and Jah, if you're that way inclined.
Now that I've
reached the technologically more advanced Channel One studio catalogue, I've
been reacquainting myself with some of the harmonious vocal-trio glories of the
'70s era: a time when I used to buy the cheap Virgin Front Line samplers as a
short-cut to all that was on offer then. The Abyssinians, the Heptones, Burning
Spear, Culture, the Wailing Souls, possibly the most infectious live band that
I ever witnessed, the Gladiators, Black Uhuru, Israel Vibration and many, many more –
including of course the Mighty Diamonds, whose Right Time just about
takes the natty biscuit.
Both the first,
title track and the last track, 'Africa', featured on the first of the Front
Line samplers. As every good sampler should do, it tempted me to spend my
unearned student florins on the real thing. I was prepared to forego a few
pints of lukewarm bitter to subsidise my burgeoning habit. Perhaps the apogee
of the vocal-trio's art, Right Time has never, ever disappointed. No,
that's a slight lie, because the 30-minute running time has always been a bone
of contention. At a mere 2 minutes 5 seconds, the track that opens the second
side, 'I Need A Roof', is one of those songs – like 'Knocking On Heaven's Door'
– that will ever leave the listener frustrated. Natural transitory mystic. It
demands a 12" version – and indeed there are versions galore, including
Prince Fatty with Little Roy's 'Roof Over My Head', a personal favourite – but
there is nothing long enough to slake my thirst.
Oh well, Right
Time wouldn't be the album it is if any track peeped above the four-minute
parapet. The opening title track, with its instantly recognisable Sly Dunbar
drum motif ushering in the gorgeous harmonies of lead vocalist Donald Sharpe
supported by Fitzroy Simpson and Lloyd Ferguson, is just about as long as it
gets at 3.15. Half an hour and 10 songs brimming with rhythm and melody. 'Natty
dread will never run away.../Dis ya a prophecy'.
The album was
produced in 1975 by Joe Joe Hoo Kim at the Channel One studio that he and his
brother Ernest founded – in true entrepreneurial Jamaican adaptable stylee
– when the government outlawed gaming machines and therefore consigned the
brothers' embryonic jukebox and fruit machine business to Babylon. The Hoo Kims
gathered around them the customary house band of luminaries, in this case an
outfit calling themselves the Revolutionaries that included the likes of Tommy
McCook on tenor sax, Sticky Thompson on percussion, Ansell Collins on keyboards
and the future riddim twins, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare.
On Right Time,
the horns are used sparingly and, on tracks like 'Natural Natty', set way, way
back in the mix, while the wonderful fluid bass of Robbie and Sly's previous
partner, Ranchie McLean, is so prominent in the mix that it almost at times
carries the melody. The fact that both are used on the album (and I certainly
don't know my bass well enough to tell one from the other) suggests that Right
Time is the transition time when Sly and Robbie were just finding each
other. There's a marvellous passage in Lloyd Bradley's book when Augustus
Pablo's protégé, Junior Delgado, describes the impact of the new rhythm
section: 'When Ranchie was there with Sly it was good, but it wasn't wicked.
That come with Robbie. As soon as him hook up with Sly they just click, like
they both want to try new things and develop their sound. The vibes come
offa them was terrible... pure terror, the other studios running for
cover as Channel One rockers' sound rule the whole scene in Kingston for maybe
two years'.
Their pure
righteous terror certainly propels the Mighty Diamonds and creates a lovely
easy rolling momentum to each one of the 10 tracks. Perhaps because the vocal
harmonies are so rich, the sound is much fuller than the basic instrumentation
might suggest. When you listen hard to ('weeping and wailing and moaning and')
'Gnashing of Teeth', for example, it's quite a surprise to discover that it's
just drum and bass and a very sparse piano playing the kind of choppy refrain
you usually associate with a rhythm guitar.
Despite a mere half
hour of rhythmic and harmonic joy, Right Time still stands as a supreme
flowering of the reggae art form. It represents a time in the mid '70s when, to
the musical yout' like me, reggae seemed so new and fresh and downright
exciting. Albums like this haven't lost their lustre. 'When the right time
comes, Lord/Some a go charge fe treason...' Treasonable perhaps for any
self-respecting reggae enthusiast not to have this one in their collection.
