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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Jun 7, 2013 |
| The ‘Crown Prince Of Reggae’, Dennis Emanuel Brown, was Jamaican music’s most consistently popular performer. Many artists achieve fame and adulation after their death but Dennis Brown earned an unparalleled amount of love and devotion during his life time. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Added: May 24, 2013 |
| Although his bass guitar beat at the heart of reggae music for over twenty years Boris Gardiner still remains a relatively unknown figure although he has contributed much more to the music than many other far more celebrated performers. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Added: Apr 26, 2013 |
| One of the most important and influential stylistic and artistic innovators of the second half of the twentieth century… |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Apr 12, 2013 |
| One of the first Jamaican record producers to enjoy overseas hits Harry J went on to make the most of his international connections. His state of the art recording complex on Roosevelt Avenue was the studio of choice throughout the seventies for the musicians and artists who followed his lead in taking reggae music out of Kingston’s ghettos and onto the worldwide stage. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Added: Apr 4, 2013 |
| The personification and epitome of musical and sartorial cool Derrick Morgan’s story recounts the growth of Jamaican music into the phenomenon that took the world by storm in the mid-seventies. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Jan 29, 2013 |
| Lloyd Charmers’ production proficiency, voice, guitar and keyboards created some of the greatest records to ever come out of Jamaica. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Added: Jan 17, 2013 |
| “Tafari was and still is a true example of how music should be made and sold on record. It’s probably the only label in the world that upholds its principles throughout all of its business. The message is in the music.” Dave Hendley. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Dec 14, 2012 |
| At a time when vocal harmonising was neither profitable nor fashionable Black Uhuru carried their sound and the message of freedom from Kingston’s Waterhouse ghetto to the international stage. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Nov 28, 2012 |
| Jackie Mittoo’s work at Studio One in the sixties built, shaped, refined and defined reggae music as we know it. He was not only an extremely talented keyboard player but was also a supremely gifted arranger and record producer. |
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Text by Harry Hawk
Date Updated: Oct 19, 2012 |
| Originally revered in the seventies as a singer of roots anthems Linval Thompson went on to build another career as one of the first, and foremost, producers of dance hall music. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Oct 1, 2012 |
| The “music maker from Jamaica” is one of a select number of Jamaican deejays who possessed not only the talent to make great records themselves but also had the generosity and ability to inspire and organise other artists to make great records too… |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Aug 23, 2012 |
| ‘Living Legend’ is a much overused and abused description. However, no-one could argue that Ewart ‘U Roy’ Beckford is a living legend. The Rightful Ruler, the ‘Deejay Daddy’, deserves every accolade that comes his way. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Added: Jul 11, 2012 |
| One of the great unsung heroes of Jamaican music Ossie Hibbert not only played piano and keyboards on countless hit records but also wrote, produced, arranged and engineered countless more. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Added: Jul 5, 2012 |
| A true original, although his style came steeped in the traditions established by pioneers such as U Roy and Big Youth, the Lone Ranger was one of the first deejays to build a bridge between the roots and culture approach of the seventies and the full on dance hall deejay attack of the eighties. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Jun 8, 2012 |
| During the years that he reigned as King Yellow no one was able to come near Yellowman’s popularity and he worked tirelessly throughout the eighties for every producer who had the wherewithal to record him… |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: May 22, 2012 |
| A consummate, professional vocalist who demonstrated, time and time again, that there was room for a versatile veteran amongst the brash, younger rising stars of the dance hall. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Added: May 8, 2012 |
| Compared to a number of his contemporaries Delroy Wilson never seemed to be really respected or recognised outside of the traditional reggae audience. But he is one of the greatest singers and songwriters to ever come out of Jamaica… a country justifiably famed for its singers and songwriters. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Apr 20, 2012 |
| A key player with The Skatalites whose beautiful saxophone can be heard on countless recordings… his work as a musical arranger and builder of the ‘Sound Of Young Jamaica’ is every bit as important but is often overlooked. |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Updated: Mar 8, 2012 |
| A very talented singer and songwriter who enjoyed considerable success in the sixties with The Techniques and then as a solo artist in the seventies |
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Text by Harry Hawks
Date Added: Feb 29, 2012 |
| John Holt is rightly revered as Jamaica’s “finest interpreter of love ballads” but he could just as easily be regarded as one of its finest rock steady singers with The Paragons, one of its foundation vocalists at Studio One, or one of its best ever roots singers through his releases for Channel One in the seventies and Henry ‘Junjo’ Lawes in the eighties… |
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