Triston Palmer Black Solidarity Presents Stop Spreading Rumours

“Favourite tunes? The tunes are like my children… there’s a whole heap of them! I want to tell you this though… some of them I never released them properly but ‘A Class Girls’ through it was the first one me love that! The rhythm! I don’t know how the song never hit in Jamaica but then again listening to it back now it’s like you’re branding the girls A and B so (perhaps) the girls weren’t happy with it: ‘That’s an A class girl… young, pretty and intelligent’ but it was a good tune, wicked tune. Tony Chin wrote it. But it was Tony Chin and Chinna who taught me these things, so I have to love those man forever.” Ossie Thomas

Triston Palma was born 1962 and grew up in Waltham Park, Kingston. Triston knew from the very beginning that he was destined to become an entertainer and his first visit to the recording studio was at the age of sixteen with Ossie Thomas. Their initial release, ‘A Class Girls’, was a hit in England and Triston’s subsequent releases on their Black Solidarity label laid the foundation for his rapid rise to dancehall superstardom “The first tune we get was a tune from Tony Chin… ‘cause Tony and Triston sing ‘A Class Girls’ but it never really hit in Jamaica. It took off in England and them pirate it so we never get no money out of it… we only sold six hundred of it in Jamaica and the rest sold in England… but the rest is history. But the next record ‘Spliff Tail’ ‘pon the ‘Storm’ rhythm… straight inna the charts so that was the first record come up on Black Solidarity. From then we can’t go wrong ‘cause we have a hit record now so everything we made from there standards had to be kept. Every tune I just tried to make them badder and badder and badder… in a dance hall slang… wickeder, wickeder and wickeder!” Ossie Thomas

In the early days of Black Solidarity Ossie was still working as a salesman for Mrs Pottinger’s Tip Top Record Centre on Orange Street and the transition from salesman to record producer was not always easy. “What really happen now I went to Mrs Pottinger and asked her for some money to buy school clothes for my brothers but what me really do is put out ‘A Class Girls’! Heh, heh, heh… So, when me put out ‘A Class Girls’ she never really knew ‘cause that couldn’t work with Mrs Pottinger! Then when we made ‘Spliff Tail’ it blew up the place and start sell thousands so right away she knew I was selling the records. One time I gave her a bill for ten thousand Jamaican dollars, and she just held her head. A couple of days after when her friend come to see her, she said ‘There goes Oswald. I have to pay him for him to make hit records for himself. I have to pay him to dress nice… then he sells me records! Yesterday he came with a bill for $10,000!’ It was a mistake selling her those records. I shouldn’t have sold her the records at all, but they were selling so hard everybody had to have the records them!” Ossie Thomas

As the eighties progressed and dancehall began its inexorable rise to ubiquity the popularity of Triston Palma, who “had nine songs in the Jamaican Top Forty” was unstoppable and a selection of his Black Solidarity hits, including ‘A Class Girls’ and ‘Spliff Tail’, were released on the ‘Spliff Tail’ album.

“Dancehall rapidly became the music for the youth of Jamaica and Triston Palma was the dancehall singer who encapsulated the spirit of music fans worldwide…” ‘Liner Notes ‘Spliff Tail’

Triston’s ‘Entertainment’ from 1982 for deejay turned producer Jah Thomas is one of the key records of the era. You find that Jah Thomas and all of them man run back to me and when we recorded artists, they recorded them too.” Ossie Thomas

The rock-solid foundation for Triston Palma’s incredible success had been laid four years previously down on Delamere Avenue and the ‘Stop Spreading Rumours’ collection, featuring a further selection of his innumerable hits, showcases where the dancehall legends of Triston Palma and Black Solidarity began. “But me now… through me spent five years amongst Mrs Pottinger and Niney and Bunny Lee it’s like me have no-where else to go… when you work with people who are successful the only way you can think is making something successful too! So, me couldn’t have failure as an option!

So me know me have to find some good artists and make some bad tunes to sort out the dancehall thing..” Ossie Thomas