The two men behind Typically Tropical were Jeff Calvert and Geraint Hughes, who both worked as audio engineers for Trojan Records. The story of "Barbados" came after Calvert was asked by his father, a travelling musician who was doing a cruise tour of the Caribbean, if he wanted to come on the journey with him.[4]
After returning to the UK, Calvert decided to write the song "Barbados", after he visited the country during the trip, and teamed up with Geraint Hughes to help him write the song, which was written in Ealing.[4] Calvert and Hughes snook into a Trojan studio after hours to record the song.[4] Calvert on guitar and Hughes on keys, the song has four chords, which at the time were the only four chords Jeff knew.[4]
After hearing the demo version of "Barbados", recorded in the spring of 1974, David Howell of Gull Records wanted to hear more, but instead Jeff and Geraint asked for £1500 to finish both "Barbados" and another track they had written, "The Ghost Song", and to record the "Barbados"' B-side, "Sandy". Having agreed, Gull then signed them up for three singles. "Barbados" was finished at the end of 1974, but Gull decided to wait until May 1975 to release it. Geraint Hughes was credited on their releases as "Max West". In August that year it reached number one, and the duo, having performed it on Top of the Pops, decided to write another nine songs for the album Barbados Sky, which was released at the same time as the follow-up single "Rocket Now" (backed with "Hole in the Sky"), and sold around 8000 copies.[citation needed]
Opening with "Barbados", the version on the album was slightly different. It began with an additional pre-take-off conversation between Captain Tobias Willcock and Air Traffic Control, whereas the single version begins with the Captain's welcome to his passengers. At the beginning of the single, but not on the album, is the unusual sound of grasshoppers chirruping (which also features at the end of "Rocket Now"), and a dog barking. The album version of the track curtails the single's original ending, fading out earlier.[citation needed]
Originally, the duos manager did not want the public to know who they were, to "keep the mystery going", however the identites of the two were soon revealed on the cover of the 28 July 1975 issue of Record Mirror.[4] The photo used of them was of the two stood behind a set of palm trees which was taken outside of St John's Wood tube station, as they were a few small palm trees there at the time.[4]
"The Ghost Song" was released as a single in November under the names "Calvert & West" with "Eternity Isle" as the B-side, but as with all their subsequent singles, it did not chart. In May 1976, the third single from the album, "Everybody Plays the Fool", was released. Further singles were released under a variety of names, but also did not chart. The duo's final original single was "Lady D", released in June 1981 on their own label, Whisper, which they had originally set up to release songs by Sarah Brightman (having written the hit "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper" in 1978).
Typically Tropical sold 381,456 copies of "Barbados" (as of November 2019) compared to the cover, "We're Going to Ibiza" by the Vengaboys which has sold 1,862,451 (as of November 2019).[citation needed]
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