1967
ONCE A MAN * JUSTIN HINDS AND THE DOMINOES * TREASURE ISLE 7017 * UK
"Once a man, twice a child, things you do will live after you"
Phew, they must be lines from some great classic text or other, because put together like that they can't be beaten or improved upon. But it's not just the words, platitudinous and trite sounding as they seem, it is the delivery, the overall aural effect, the listener takes in from that messianic moment when Justin Hinds, Dennis Sinclair and Junior Dixon, singing with Tommy McCook and Herman Marquis leading the rest of the band, recorded it. The songs chosen to record by Justin Hinds, Dennis Sinclair and Junior Dixon are consistently of this high moral and didactic standard, all of which the group manage to pull off successfully without descending into gratuitous patronizing mush; which under many other circumstances would be a likely outcome. Once A Man was recorded for Duke Reid, and if, it is as thought that, Justin Hinds cut something like seventy singles with him then there is a truly magnificent legacy of this music to be heard.
See also: