from the LP Come Back Darling, Trojan Records, 1969Perhaps one of the earliest musical admonitions to keep your yap shut, the modern equivalent of which is commonly referred to as “stop snitching”, this quick little ditty by Jamaican baritone Johnny Osbourne delivers to the listener the perfect quasi-parable to elicit his point, “…if a fish would keep his mouth shut, he wouldn’t get caught…” This early approach at reggae was coined “rocksteady” and was primarily influenced by American soul and doo-wop records; on this album, Mr. Osbourne is backed by the excellent Sensations (I used to assume many of the backing singers on rocksteady cuts were females, but they’re actually guys singing in falsetto). I have a soft-spot for the shabby production quality found on these old reggae tracks, it captures the energy more accurately.
