Althea And Donna
- Althea Forrest
- Sunrise c. 1960
- Donna Reid
- Sunrise c. 1959
Band. Reggae
- Active
- 1977-1979
Althea Forrest and Donna Reid were seventeen and eighteen when "Uptown Top Ranking" reached number one in Britain in February 1978. Neither had recorded before and neither had a substantial career afterward.
The record began as an answer song. Trinity had a hit with "Three Piece Suit," a deejay's boast about tailoring and status, cut over the riddim of Alton Ellis's "I'm Still in Love with You." Joe Gibbs and Errol Thompson put the two schoolgirls on the same riddim to talk back. Their own account begins earlier: driving home from Ocho Rios after hearing "Three Piece Suit," they started ad-libbing for fun, "I said one thing, and she said one thing, and the song was made," and it was Jacob Miller, hearing them reel it off, who took them to the studio. Their reply was the better record: lighter, funnier, and delivered in patois dense enough that British radio played it for months with only a general sense of the lyrics.
The subject is clothes and self-possession, handled without apology. British pop audiences had met reggae mainly through roots consciousness and rude boy narratives, and a Jamaican number one this cheerful was unusual.
Later singles did not chart and the duo separated within a few years. "Uptown Top Ranking" was among the first records by Jamaican women to reach a mass international audience, and it has stayed in circulation.
Last updated November 1, 2026
Connections
- Joe Gibbs (producer)
- Errol Thompson (engineer)
- Alton Ellis (session work)
- Trinity (session work)
Notes
- "Uptown Top Ranking," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uptown_Top_Ranking, which cites the Official Singles Chart for February 4, 1978; "Althea & Donna," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althea_%26_Donna; "Althea & Donna's 'Uptown Top Ranking' Soared to No. 1 in the UK 45 Years Ago," DancehallMag, February 4, 2023, https://www.dancehallmag.com/2023/02/04/news/althea-donnas-uptown-top-ranking-soared-to-no-1-in-the-uk-45-years-ago.html.
- "Althea & Donna," Wikipedia, which notes several further singles "with little success."
- Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 353; Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 73, 162.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 162, which credits the production to the Mighty Two, Joe Gibbs and Errol Thompson; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 352-53. Bradley adds that the record was at first an "all-but-ignored" alternative cut of Trinity's "Three Piece Suit," and that Mikey Dread's repeated plays on JBC radio persuaded Gibbs to release it. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 318.
- "Exclusive: The Untold Story of 'Uptown Top Ranking' by Donna and Althea," World Music Views, May 5, 2024, https://worldmusicviews.com/exclusive-the-untold-story-of-uptown-top-ranking-by-donna-and-althea. The duo say they did not meet Gibbs until they were in Europe.
- In Britain the record was first championed by John Peel on BBC Radio 1, followed by a Top of the Pops appearance; it spent eleven weeks on the chart. "Uptown Top Ranking," Wikipedia.
- "Althea & Donna," Wikipedia.
- "Althea & Donna," Wikipedia describes them as the first Jamaican female duo to top the UK Singles Chart. Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" (1964) is an earlier international hit by a Jamaican woman.
