Song of the Day 3/22: Bobby Bloom, “Montego Bay”

Before Bob Marley, Caribbean music in the U.S. mostly had a Latin flavor and beats that favored ballroom-style dancing. But every once in a while a bit of calypso and its Jamaican cousin, mento, would slip through, as in 1970, when two Brooklynites — former doo-wop singer and jingle writer Bobby Bloom and tunesmith Jeff Barry of Barry and Greenwich fame (“Be My Baby,” “Da Wah Diddy Diddy”) — collaborated on a song that captured the island’s vibe in a sort of proto-reggae sound.

The song sprang from Bloom’s visits to the resort area, then and now the island’s tourism capital. “It has a certain peacefulness that really sticks in your mind,” Bloom said when introducing the song live. “It’s the kind of a place that makes you write songs about it.” The single reached No. 8 on the Hot 100. Bloom died in 1974 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

A lot of people think Bloom’s apparently ad-lib addition of the opening line from “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” ruined the song. One guy on YouTube even re-edited it to give us a remixed “pure” version of the song. This is the version on my playlist, mainly because he also elongated it by repeating the first verse and adding a long fadeout. It never would have been a hit, though, because it’s over four minutes long, and in 1970 DJs were still reluctant to play anything that exceeded three minutes.