The Mighty Diamonds were one of the leading vocal harmony trios to come out of Jamaica alongside Culture, The Gladiators, The Abyssinians and Black Uhuru.
With their soulful hamonies, they were as adept at love songs as protest anthems, tackling social or spiritual issues, making them one of the more acessible and popular roots groups of the mid-1970s.
Right Time still stands as one of roots reggae’s all-time classics and introduced them to white UK audiences when it appeared on Richard Branson’s 1976 Front Line sampler album.
In a stroke of marketing genius (the same one he had used with The Faust Tapes), the album sold for a giveaway 59p to introduce the label’s roster of new signings from Jamaica.
The Mighty Diamonds were formed in 1969 in the Kingston ghetto of Trenchtown, also Bob Marley’s backyard, with a lineup of founder and harmony singer Pat “Lloyd” Ferguson (aka The Judge), lead singer Donald “Tabby” Shaw (The Prophet) and harmony singer Fitzroy “Bunny” Simpson (The Jester).
Their 1976 album Right Time spawned several hits including the standout I Need a Roof, Have Mercy and Africa.
Ice On Fire, the follow-up to Right Time, disappointed due to their label’s strange and misguided idea of sending them to New Orleans to team up with Allen Toussaint on an uneasy marriage of reggae and American R&B.
Retreating from the failed crossover experiment, the group returned to Channel One in Jamaica and cut several strong roots albums over the next few years: 1978’s Stand Up For Your Judgement, 1979’s Tell Me What’s Wrong and the most acclaimed of the bunch, 1979’s Deeper Roots.
In the early ’80s, the group started working with producer Gussie Clarke, reworking old Studio One rhythm tracks into new songs on their 1981 album Changes.
One of them, Pass the Kouchie, was a major hit in Jamaica and the following year a drug-free version recorded by UK child group Musical Youth topped the charts here (retitled Pass The Dutchie) – a cooking pot replacing the other kind of pot of the original.
Sadly the group came to a sudden and tragic end when Tabby was murdered in a drive-by shooting in Kingston in March 2022.