A footnote to “Sara Smile” by Hall and Oates, the song I wrote about a few days ago: Its B-side was another tune from the duo’s Silver Album, a reggae-flavored cover called “Soldering.”
After Eric Clapton had a hit covering “I Shot the Sheriff” in 1974, rock musicians started to pay more attention to Jamaican music. Hall and Oates must have heard this song soon after it came out, because their album was released just a few months after it was in 1975.
The original is by Stanley Beckford, whose style was not reggae but mento, its precursor from the ’50s — folk music played acoustically, a throwback in mid-’70s Jamaica. For comparison, think of how Sha Na Na kept doo-wop alive in the US into the ’70s and ’80s, long after its ’50s heyday.
Early in his career Beckford joined the Soul Syndicate, a top studio backing band, but soon left over musical differences. He was working as a night watchman when he wrote a song, “You Are a Wanted Man,” that caught the ear of producer Alvin “GG” Ranglin. Despite, or perhaps because of, its rustic style it shot to No. 1 on the island in 1973.
In 1975 Anglin produced what became Beckford’s biggest hit, the sexually suggestive “Soldering.” Jamaican radio promptly banned it, and record buyers promptly propelled it to No. 1.
The Hall and Oates version uses a cheesy keyboard rhythm track set to calypso — you’ll notice the beat isn’t quite Jamaican — and softened some of the local patois. It generally sounds like something they did while goofing off in the studio. I like the interlacing vocal parts, though.
