The Mighty Diamonds hit their stride with "Right Time," a flawless roots reggae album cut at Channel One in 1976. Three voices stacked like stained glass over Sly and Robbie's deepest grooves. If you need one reggae record that doesn't waste a note, this is it.
The bass doesn’t enter. It arrives.
Four bars into the title track, Robbie Shakespeare’s Fender Jazz bass slips through the mix like smoke under a door. Sly Dunbar’s hi-hat follows a step behind. Then the voices drop in — three men who could make a concrete block weep.
This is what Channel One sounded like when the tape was rolling and Joseph Hoo Kim had the levels set just right.
The Mighty Diamonds were never the loudest group in Jamaica. Donald “Tabby” Shaw, Lloyd “Judge” Ferguson, and Fitzroy “Bunny” Simpson built their sound on a harmony stack so tight it felt like one voice with three bodies. Tabby sang lead. Judge added the gospel-inflected tenor. Bunny held the bottom. They came from the Trench Town ghettos, cut their teeth singing at Studio One with Coxsone Dodd, but it was at Channel One — Joseph Hoo Kim’s sweaty Kingston studio — that they found their home.
“Right Time” was recorded in a room that barely fit the band. The Hoo Kim brothers ran a one-inch 8-track Ampex, pushed it hot, and let the leakage glue everything together. Ernest Hoo Kim, Joseph’s brother, sat behind the board. He wasn’t a man for multiple takes. If Sly and Robbie got the feel in one pass — and they always did — that was the take.
Sly Dunbar had already started developing the “Rockers” beat by 1976. Listen to how he plays the rim on “I Need a Roof” — that sharp crack against the snare, the way he rides the hi-hat with his shoulder. He’s not just keeping time. He’s telling the song where to breathe. Robbie, meanwhile, had a touch that guitar players envied: every note placed with the weight of a man who knew silence was as important as sound.
The session musicians deserve their own paragraph. Earl “Chinna” Smith played most of the guitar lines — crisp, minimal, never crowded. Ansel Collins handled the keyboard parts on a worn-out Clavinet that sounded like it had been through a hurricane. Uziah “Sticky” Thompson’s percussion work on “Them Never Love Poor Marcus” adds a ghostly shaker that sits just behind the snare, barely there until you tune into it.
But the album belongs to the voices.
“Right Time” became an anthem precisely because it was vague enough to mean anything — a lover’s plea, a political statement, a Rastafarian prayer. Tabby’s lead floats above the riddim like he’s singing to someone across the room. Judge and Bunny weave around him in thirds, never fighting for space. The harmonies on “You Are a Treasure” are so pure they sound like they were cut in a cathedral, not a Kingston studio with a leaky roof and a generator that hummed through the power lines.
There’s a moment on “Money” where the arrangement drops to just the voices and a snare. No bass. No keys. Three men, naked in the mix, holding the song together with nothing but breath and pitch. It’s the kind of confidence that comes from singing together for years, from knowing exactly when to step back and let the other guy shine.
This is not a polished album. It sounds like a room. The hi-hat bleeds into Tabby’s microphone. You can hear Robbie’s fingers slide up the neck between verses. The vinyl pressings from 1976 — the Channel One originals — have a surface noise that feels like a blessing. Every pop and crackle is a reminder that this music was made by people, for people, in a time when perfection was the enemy of soul.
The Mighty Diamonds would go on to record more albums, but they never quite recaptured the balance of “Right Time.” Later records added strings, overdubs, slicker production. This one has nothing extra. It’s just bass, drum, voice, and the warm hum of a tape machine running at fifteen inches per second.
Put it on after midnight. Low lights. No distractions.
The bass doesn’t enter. It arrives.
🎵 Key Takeaways
- The bass arrives, not enters, four bars into Right Time.
- Robbie Shakespeare's bass slips through like smoke under a door.
- The Diamonds' harmony felt like one voice with three bodies.
- Recorded on one-inch 8-track Ampex pushed hot for leakage glue.
- Sly Dunbar's hi-hat follows a step behind the bass entrance.
- Earl Chinna Smith's guitar lines were crisp, minimal, never crowded.
What is the album 'Right Time' about?
Lyrically, the songs blend love, social commentary, and Rastafarian devotion. The title track can be heard as a lover's call or a political rallying cry — the ambiguity is deliberate and part of its power.
Who played on 'Right Time'?
The rhythm section was Sly Dunbar (drums) and Robbie Shakespeare (bass), with Earl 'Chinna' Smith on guitar, Ansel Collins on keyboards, and Uziah 'Sticky' Thompson on percussion. That lineup was basically the house band at Channel One in 1976.
How does 'Right Time' compare to other Mighty Diamonds albums?
It is widely considered their finest work. Earlier albums like 'Right Time' (1976) built on their Studio One roots, but here the production is cleaner and the songwriting sharper. Later albums added more pop gloss, but none matched this balance of soul and grit.
Further Reading