1967
BLAM BLAM FEVER * THE VALENTINES * DOCTOR BIRD 1065 * UK
Blam Blam Fever (Gunsfever) to give it it's full title, is a mellow Rock Steady cut produced by Sonja Pottinger which laments the gun shooting violence rife at the time, and blamed on the Rude Boy's in the ghettos of Kingston. The song tells of how "Every time you read the Gleaner or Star" (Jamaica's two national daily newspapers) "It's man shot dead or Rude Boy at war". I would guess that not all the gun crime was committed by Rude Boys, Jamaica, even a decade later, had a disproportional share of fatalities by gun shot, one item of news from 1976 gives a wider picture when it tells of how, while investigating a 'fuss', a police officer shot a fellow officer in the head as he was banging on the door of a house with the but of his revolver, causing the gun to fire and fatally wounding the man behind him.