I heard this song out somewhere a while back, but only recently figured out what it was; since then, I've been mildly obsessed with it. Even the first time I heard it, it sounded instantly familiar. And well, it was: it borrows the riddim from one of my all-time favourite rocksteady songs, Alton Ellis' "I'm Still in Love with You," itself a rather brilliant combination of soulful longing and catchy danceability. Over the next decade, it had been covered and re-used several times, notably by Marcia Aitken and deejay Trinity in the year before Uptown's release.
In 1978, just over a decade after Ellis's hit version, two Jamaican girls in their late teens scored a surprise #1 single in the UK with this playful bit of patois bragadoccio. The riddim is actually a re-recording, with several subtle differences in mix and arrangement that lend a certain sparkle and snap to the original's dusty charm.
Enjoy.
And for comparison's sake, the original:
