The Pama Label

The great Pama label, run by the Palmer Brothers from 1967 to 1973. It released over 150 singles, beginning with Carlton Alphonso's Where In This World. The label itself underwent one or two changes in appearance, but still changed colour on a weekly basis. 

Some of Pama'sbest releases included songs from Clancy Eccles What Will Your Mama Say, The Termites Push It Up,  and Lloyd Terrell's Birth Control. One problem that continued to plague Pama always was that the records it released always seemed to come out on other non-Pama labels at the same time. Pama couldn't even keep track of its own releases, with the same catalogue number accounting for many records. An example of this is PM 863 which are (according to the labels), both the same title (Big Eight), but with different singers (Lloyd Terrell & Winston Reed), and different B-sides (Auntie Lu Lu by Junior Byles, and Instrumental Version of Big Eight by Ranny Williams Allstars with The Classics). This sort of confusion happened regularly with British releases of all Jamaican music, but none more so than the unforgettable Pama label.

Some great releases on Pama were:  Jaded Rumble by Reco Rodriques, Caledonia from Val Bennett, Dangerous by Keble Drummond,  True Believer by Larry Marshall, and Some Day from Alton Ellis. Of special interest is I Jah Man's first release in England, under the name The Youth and entitled Jesus Keepeth My Soul/Fire Fire.

A big hit for Pama was Daniel by Junior English in 1973. According to producer Ellis Breary, Daniel sold over 60,000 copies without even denting the British pop charts, before difficulties in getting the record pressed saw sales trail off. Justin Hinds released some great tunes when the Pama label was revived in the mid seventies, including Sinners Where Are You Going To Hide and If Its Love You Need.

Pama Discography

PM-755 is unreleased. It exists only as a test pressing
PM-863 was released as Something Stick, but was changed when Judge Dread released Big Eight