The Slickers

Although their biggest hit, “Johnny Too Bad,” is really a Jamaican classic and was included on the soundtrack towards the Harder They Come, the precise makeup and history of the Slickers is really a tangled mare’s nest of rumors and contradictions. The very first single to seem beneath the Slickers name, “Nana,” was made by Neremiah Reid, and has been in fact documented on the sly by people from the Pioneers. Derrick Crooks was an associate from the nascent Pioneers (together with his sibling Sydney Crooks), and appears to have produced the exact Slickers around 1965 with Winston Bailey, even though group essentially contains Crooks and employed weapons he enlisted to sing with him. A singer called Abraham Green (later on referred to as Ras Abraham) can be said to possess handled the business lead vocal on “Johnny As well Poor” when it had been documented for maker Byron Lee in 1970. The music itself can be detailed as having been compiled by Derrick Crooks, Roy Beckford, Winston Bailey, and either Delroy Wilson or his sibling Trevor Wilson, with regards to the source, though it shows up Trevor might have been the particular author (along with the protagonist for the rude-boy personality portrayed within the music). Nothing regarding the Slickers appears to be created in stone, nevertheless, and half-informed conjecture regarding the group’s make-up and history appears to be typical. “Johnny Too Poor” became a famous music after its addition for the Harder soundtrack, and countless variations have been documented by other music artists in a number of designs, including a disco blend rendition credited towards the Slickers themselves. Actually this second edition of “Johnny As well Bad” from the Slickers can be hard to pin down. It made an appearance on an recording called Breakthrough and it is rumored to have already been made by Lee “Scrape” Perry. It really has all of the earmarks of the Black Ark creation, but there’s some doubt concerning whether Perry was mixed up in project whatsoever. Some version from the Slickers toured both U.S. and European countries and released periodic singles with the 1970s before ceasing around 1978. The reality? The original edition of “Johnny As well Bad” is among the most celebrated paths ever documented in Jamaica. Several the group’s additional singles, especially “You Can’t Get” and “Guy Beware,” aren’t as well poor, either. Beyond that, the exact background of the Slickers provides yet to become definitively established.