Right Time | ||||
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Studio album by Mighty Diamonds | ||||
Released | 1976 | |||
Recorded | Channel One Studios, Kingston, Jamaica | |||
Genre | Reggae | |||
Label | Virgin Records | |||
Producer | Joseph Hoo Kim | |||
Mighty Diamonds chronology | ||||
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Professional ratings | |
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Review scores | |
Source | Rating |
Allmusic | |
Robert Christgau | [A-] |
Right Time is the 1976 studio album debut of influential reggae band the Mighty Diamonds. The album, released by Virgin Records after they signed the Mighty Diamonds following a search for talent in Jamaica, is critically regarded as a reggae classic, a landmark in the roots reggae subgenre. Several of the album's socially conscious songs were hits in the band's native Jamaica, with a few becoming successful in the UK underground. Influential and sometimes unconventional, the album helped secure the success of recording studio Channel One Studios, and rhythm team Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare.
The Mighty Diamonds were among the first artists signed to the Virgin record label after it entered the reggae music market. The Mighty Diamonds had been discovered by Jamaica's Channel One Studios, and when Virgin followed Island Records into the Jamaican marketplace, they, too, discovered The Mighty Diamonds. Virgin's representatives set up a table at a Sheraton Hotel with $100,000 and, after police intervention calmed the resultant excitement, left with such artists as the Mighty Diamonds, Prince Far I, Johnny Clarke and Big Youth on their roster. The album, the Mighty Diamonds' record debut, was recorded at Channel One Studios in Kingston, Jamaica, with production by Chinese Jamaican Joseph Hoo Kim, whose family owned the studio. 2006's Caribbean Popular Music notes that "[w]ith the release of ...Right Time in 1976, the studio came into its own."
The album has been critically well received. In 1976 Rolling Stone described the album as "simply one of the finest reggae LPs ever released. In 1977, it called it "the finest stateside reggae release of last year." It has come to be regarded as a reggae classic, a landmark in the roots reggae subgenre. The album is listed by Pop Matters among the "Five Reggae Albums You Cannot Live Without", with reviewer Sean Murphy commenting that "Right Time manages to combine several styles and merge them in a seamless, practically flawless whole. This, to be certain, is roots reggae, yet at times it sounds like the most accessible soul music, closer to Motown than Trenchtown."