One of my all time favourites….
Red Red Wine was a massive hit for reggae group UB40 in the UK and the US in the 80s. The British band had heard Tony Tribe’s 1969 Trojan single and there is a story, possibly apocryphal, that they assumed the N. Diamond accredited on Tribe’s record as the composer was the name of some obscure Jamaican Rastafarian contemporary of Bob Marley.
Only when their version took off did they realise the song was originally a smooth, sad ballad of lost love penned by pop singer/songwriter extraordinaire Neil Diamond who’d had a modest Billboard hit with it in 1968……
