Black Crucial – Mr. Sonny

1985, Jammy’s Records

In recent months this record has grown and grown on me to the point that I would call it my favourite album. After making this decision I decided to look more into the group behind it, and was shocked to discover nothing at all about Black Crucial on the internet, not even the members’ names, and no other images besides the ones on the front and back cover of this LP. For a group that released an LP on Jammy’s this seems remarkable. To find a silver lining we could say that it adds a layer of mystique to an already quite special record.

What we do know is that Black Crucial is a harmony trio, which had been a staple kind of musical group in Jamaica since at least the early sixties – The Wailers, The Paragons, The Heptones, The Maytals, The Gaylads, The Pioneers, The Cables, The Ethiopians, The Abyssinians, and The Mighty Diamonds come to mind. During the rocksteady era this was probably the most popular type of musical act, and there were some around in the roots and rockers era, but when dancehall came around they lost most of their ground to singers and deejays. By the time this record came out in 1985 it was more or less a thing of the past, with most harmony trio records being done by members of the old guard. But Black Crucial is ostensibly fresh blood, with their first record out in 1983, and then we get this dancehall harmony LP in 1985 with Jammy’s riddims. To my knowledge this is the only harmony trio LP in 1985, FORWARD a message if I am wrong, but if I am right then this record would already be special by virtue of this alone even if it weren’t good.

But one trend with Jamaican harmony trio records is that they are invariably good, and even the weak ones are worth listening to, but like I said before this one is in one crucial caliber. The way these fellas fling melody, harmony, ornamentation and rhythm makes one wonder how this style was not bigger or even the mainstream at the time. One telling and salient point about this record is that all six tunes are very memorable, and not just memorable but flawlessly executed, and not just flawlessly executed on the vocals but in perfect agreement with their riddims. Conscience Speaks is perhaps the best example of the latter, with the entire rhythm section part seemingly fine-tuned just for the vocal hook of “Conscience speaks, louder than action”. Lyrics throughout most of the record follow a similar vibe, it’s very much a roots and culture record, with familiar topics like paying the rent, crebbie crebbie girls, shoutouts to the farmers, but President shakes things up a bit with the lyric “I am the president, president, president inna the dancehall style, wicked and wild”, which is not the kind of thing on any rocksteady trio’s lips! It is mostly a solo affair vocally, recounting a police brutality story ending with the police letting him go after realising their mistake – after all, he is the president inna dancehall stylee, who never trouble no one.

Dubs on this record are not overwhelming by anyone’s standards, they are on the ‘very tame’ end of the dub spectrum with little more going on than a fat reverb for one instrument and nothing on the rest. Still they are tasteful and very welcome, we all love Jammy’s versions, and we all love a good showcase record. As a closing piece of praise for the album, I will forgo the usual ‘My Picks’ section where I recommend the top tunes from the record, because I really cannot put any of them on a lower tier than the others, and I feel no compromise needs to be made or reservations held in just saying all six are perfect and calling it a day. Only strike against this record is that the bim count is 0.