Chapter 37: Dub Is All I Bring
In which I look back on the UK's second best number 1, and share a bit of love.
Thanks once again to Ian Wade’s indispensable What A Fucking Record account on Bluesky, I was reminded the other day that ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ by Althea & Donna arrived in UK record shops 48 years ago. An arbitrary anniversary, you might argue, but it inspired me to dig out a track from a shelved project I was working on many years ago called Trojam.
Let’s set the way back machine to the summer of 2011. Life had changed a bit for me over the previous six or so months following the release of Duppy Writer, and more and more gig offers rolled in at various clubs and festivals. Lots of festivals. I was a sleep-addled mess, and in the early stages of making In East London which I’d soon sign to Tru Thoughts. There was almost no time or mental space for another project, but my mind was always wandering off to the next one, regardless, and if there’s one thing a faltering dub producer can’t say no to, it’s the opportunity to push the parameters of time and space, so when Hard-Fi’s manager called me to say he had a mate at Universal who’d just acquired the Trojan catalogue, I could hardly say I’m washing my hair.
I’d been doing a few bits and bobs with Trojan in the 00s, and was gutted when most of the team were laid off during the transition when Universal bought it’s parent label Sanctuary, so it would be handy to have a potential contact at the label again. I was urged to come up with something commercially viable. No niche and noisy dubs this time. I took a look at the rest of the Universal roster, and it dawned on me that they also had the Def Jam catalogue.
Trojan..?
Def Jam..?
A faulty lightbulb began to flicker above my aching head as a portmanteau slowly formed.
In 2011 reggae/hip hop mash-ups and bootlegs had almost reached a saturation point, but so had my finances, so when “Trojam” sprang to mind, I couldn’t simply laugh it off. It felt kind of grubby and opportunistic, maybe a bit trashy like bootlegs often are, but also catchy. I emailed it over with a brief project pitch, and set to work on a couple of ideas using Def Jam-owned acapellas and a few classic rhythms in the Trojan arsenal.
The first was Jay-Z’s ‘Girls Girls Girls’ which I laid over the instrumental of ‘Uptown Top Ranking’. It sounded pretty decent, so I lined up a few more — ‘Izzo’ over the Stalag, a bit of Method Man mixed with Don Drummond, Rihanna on the Mad Mad rhythm — and sent over some rough mixes. The project seemed to have legs, but it was clearly going to be a copyright minefield, and an abyss of permissions, so it quickly fizzled out. My shot at the big time was a misfire, and I was back to making niche dancehall and dub.
This week I clicked on the Trojam folder in Logic for the first time in forever, and I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, these kind of blends are probably old hat to some now, but I think this one works pretty well, even if it is called ‘I’m Still In Love With Girls’. Hell, one thing I still love about bootlegs is the absurd names we often gave them. The cartoon misogyny of the song, maybe not so much, but I’m sharing this more as a time capsule of a project which could’ve been, had Universal not offloaded Trojan to BMG a couple of years later.
So, if you’re one of my cherished full subscribers, scroll to the bottom to grab an MP3 of ‘I’m Still In Love With Girls’ and a new dub mix which I made the other day in honour of Althea & Donna topping the charts nearly 5 decades ago. Before that though, following the video clip below, I’ve written something about the evolution of ‘Uptown Top Ranking’, so settle in and kick off your heels an’ ting…
Who Ranks In A Town Like This?
I probably don’t need to tell you that the roots of this record lie in a whimsical rocksteady number which Alton Ellis recorded at Studio 1 back in ‘67. ‘I’m Still In Love’ rocked the dance on both sides of the Atlantic that year, but quickly disappeared as tempos dropped and reggae evolved until, half a decade later, Dillinger voiced a heavy-stepping version for Bunny Lee. “I’m still in love with you, Dillinger!” declares an unidentified voice before the deejay starts chatting about his suits, socks and ting.
It’s unclear if this was the first version, but various sources claim it was recorded in ‘73. If true, that’s a couple of years before Trinity cut his ‘Three Piece Suit’ over Joe Gibbs’ rework of the rhythm which was originally made to showcase schoolgirl Marcia Aitken with ‘I’m Still In Love With You Boy’ in 1975. Gibbs’ rendering gave this Studio 1 staple a new lease of life at the dancehall, with a croaking clavinet riding the downbeat rhythm section. It’s instantly recognisable, transcending generations thanks to a succession of chart toppers and dance floor hits, but while you may think the evolution of ‘Uptown Top Ranking’ goes straight from Trinity to the top of the pops, there’s a few tracks unaccounted for.
The story goes that Jacob Miller saw teenagers Althea & Donna singing in the street and plucked them from obscurity, taking them straight to Joe Gibbs’ studio where they made their hit. Half true, the latter part at least, but Althea Forrest was already a recording artist when she met Miller. Her debut single, a slinky disco cut, slathered in synths and produced by reggae pioneer Derrick Harriot, came out in ‘76 when Forrest was only 13. ‘Hey Mister’ was laid down at Ken Khouri’s Federal studio, not long after Khouri’s first major foray into the genre when, by chance, he recorded and released the original 7” of ‘More More More’ by Andrea True Connection.
After a handful of solo singles, Althea befriended Donna Reid at a concert in Ocho Rios where they caught Jacob Miller performing with Third World. Later that night on the drive back to Kingston, they heard Trinity’s ‘Three Piece Suit’ on the radio and started free-forming their own version, the duo going back and forth with lines about their “heels an’ ting”.
Though Althea and Donna have described themselves as uptown girls, which would inspire the lyric, it’s worth noting that soon after ‘Three Piece Suit’, Trinity released ‘Uptown Thing Carry The Swing’. Whether that subconsciously influenced the duo, I couldn’t tell you, but it was a chance meeting with Miller, in a club rather than on the street, which led them to record their answer to Trinity’s song about his diamond socks. The girls gave Miller an impromptu rendition of their new version, and a couple of days later they were in the vocal booth.
At Joe Gibbs?
Over his remake of ‘I’m Still In Love’?
Nope.
Their first attempt was over a spacious and completely different roots rhythm performed by Inner Circle. “They said it didn’t sound right”, recalled Donna Reid in an interview for World Music Views, and as far as they knew, the project was ditched, but a mysterious 7” did the rounds in ‘77 on the Top Ranking imprint under the name ‘Top Ranking Girls’, and credited to The Rolets.
