Paragons - My Best Girl Wears My Crown 1966-1968 (1992)

01. Happy Go Lucky Girl

  02.  I Want To Go Back

03. When The Lights Are Low

04. On the Beatch 

05. Island In The Sun

06. Riding On A High And Windy Day

07. Silver Bird

08. The Same Song

09. The Tide Is High

10. I Wanna Be With You

11. Mercy Mercy Mercy

12. Wear You To The Ball

13.  I'm A Worried Man

14. My Best Girl

15. You Mean The World To Me

16.  Only A Smile

17. Paragons Medley

✓ Name: The Paragons
✓ Cd Name: My Best Girl Wears My Crown
 ✓ For Promotional Use Only !!!
✓ Genre: Reggae/Rocksteady
✓ Released: 1971
✓ Label: Trojan

✓ Born:  Jamaica 
✓ Producer: Duke Reid
✓ Recorded At: 
✓ Saxophone: Tommy McCook

✓ Backing Band: The Supersonic
✓ Engineered: Byron Smith

 ✓  Recorded At: Treasure Isle Recording Studio
✓ Manufactured By: MPO
✓ Track: 17
✓ No Download.
✓ My Best GirlWears My Crown (Download)
✓ Upload: RAS Reggae Music Box
✓ Size: 49.15 mb
✓ Biltrate: 128 kbps
✓ Playtime: min.
✓ Facebook.
✓ Twitter.
✓ LastFm.
✓ AllMusic.
✓ ReggaeCollector. 
✓ RootsArchives.
✓ Discogs.
✓ WebSite. 
✓ YouTube.
✓ Wikipedia. 

 

Without having read up on the relevant history, this is just guesswork, but the Kingston vocal group from whence issued both “The Tide Is High” (the sad violin is really what makes their version, I think) and lead singer/lover’s rock pioneer John Holt is most easily comprehended (to me) as early reggae’s equivalent to The Drifters -- The Paragons have that same capacity to sound simultaneously urbane and innocent.

 

 Some material (“On the Beach,” “Silver Bird”) is fairly predictable though thoroughly enjoyable, but two tracks in particular surprised me, in ways that may merely show my ignorance: “I Wanna Be With You” has chromatic harmonies and cut measures (both evoking Bacharach) that I’ve never heard in Jamaican music of this vintage, and “When The Lights Are Low” has a completely non-reggae rhythmic basis -- for the most part it could be the Stax house band pinch-hitting for Tommy McCook and the Supersonics, with some pseudo-Latin congas thrown on top. 

 

That tune and several others bear “unknown” writing credits, but most of the rest is either by Holt or the group -- the only credited piece of outside material is an unrecognizable cover of Don Covay’s “Mercy Mercy Mercy”. Much as I enjoy this, I can’t recommend this particular release: I’m quite sure these songs are not presented chronologically, but the liner notes are no help, and most or all of this is evidently mastered from the vinyl -- I could swear the pitch of “I Want to Go Back” wavers, as though it weren’t centered on the spindle.