16 October 1982
It wasn’t the case in my family, as our parents didn’t listen to pop music radio, but one friend of mine and her siblings spent many ’80s mealtimes handing each other condiments to the air of “pass the ketchup on the left hand side” with no notion of what a ‘dutchie’ was. I wonder if many grown-up listeners knew what it was either, unless they inferred it just from being reggae.
Unlike another teenage reggae hit, Althea and Donna’s brilliant ‘Uptown Top Ranking’, ‘Pass The Dutchie’ sounds at all times like a kids’ song performed by kids. It’s perfectly fine on its own terms, but you wouldn’t want it to be anyone’s sole impression of the vast and varied riches of reggae.
‘Pass The Dutchie’ was the first UK number one to bear a co-production credit for—cue ‘Flight of the Valkyries’—Pete Waterman, who had spent time in Jamaica working with reggae artists. His work will feature again during the decade.
