Everything I Own has an unusual place in pop history. It’s a song that gave two artists their only number one hits – but was a comparative flop for the band that wrote and recorded it first.
I don’t suppose Ken Boothe has the fondest memories of it either… he didn’t make a penny from his three-week stint at the top of the charts.

Boothe, who had been a big rocksteady star in Jamaica for a decade, missed out on publishing because it’s a cover of a song by soft-rock favourites Bread. And his UK record label, Trojan, went bust in 1975, just as the performance royalties would have begun trickling in.

Still, it’s a great version, and much better than Boy George‘s cod-reggae cover which went to number one as well in 1987. It was the solitary chart topper for both of them (though George had topped the charts with his band Culture Club) while Bread‘s original only reached no.32 in 1972.

In fact Boothe first heard the song sung not by Bread, whose singer David Gates wrote it for his father, but by Andy Williams.

He recorded it in Kingston, Jamaica, with a crack band including Willie Lindo on guitar, The Revolutionaries’ Lloyd Parks on bass and Paul Douglas, the drummer from Toots and the Maytals, with Lloyd Charmers producing and playing the keyboards.