Black Uhuru could have been the successors to Bob Marley & the Wailers as the kings of reggae. Their early work, with Sly & Robbie at the controls, remains flawless.

I could have chosen just about any track by Black Uhuru, the most successful of reggae’s second wave of bands in the early Eighties – songs like Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, Shine Eye Gal, Sinsemilla and Sponji Reggae are all pretty much standards.

This tune got a wider release on their self-titled 1981 album but I prefer this earlier version from a Jamaican 12-inch single in 1979 (and the early compilation album Showcase) with a wicked dub by Sly and Robbie, who did arguably their best work as producers and musicians with Black Uhuru.

Led by the quavery voice of songwriter Michael Rose, the vocal trio of Rose, Duckie Simpson and Puma Jones – a rarity not just in being a woman but an American social worker with a degree from Columbia University – looked for a while like becoming natural successors to Bob Marley & the Wailers.

Even after Michael Rose left to start a coffee farm in the Blue Mountains after Anthem in 1985 – the first reggae album ever to win a Grammy – the band continued its success with soundalike replacement Junior Reid, but never hit the heights of Marley without Rose’s talents, especially after the sad loss of Puma, who died of cancer in 1990.