Artiste Tribute

Artiste Tribute
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Alton Nehemiah Ellis, OD, was born September 1, 1938 and grew up in Kingston's Trench Town district in Jamaica. He attended Ebeneezer and Boy's Town schools, where he excelled in both music and sports. Ellis initially sought fame as a dancer, competing on Vere John's Opportunity Hour. After winning a couple of competitions, he switched to singing, starting his career in 1959 as part of the duo Alton & Eddy with Eddy Perkins. Ellis and Perkins recorded for Coxsone Dodd at Studio One, initially in the R&B style, having a massive hit with Muriel, a song Ellis had written whilst working as a laborer on a work site. He also recorded follow-ups songs My Heaven, Lullabye Angel, I Know It All, I'm Never Gonna Cry and Yours. The duo...
One of the great success stories of the ’80s, Barrington Levy, arrived on the dancehall scene and swiftly remodeled it in his own image. Although numerous DJs and vocalists would rise and fall during this decade, Levy was one of the few with staying power, and he continued releasing massive hits well into the ’90s. Born in 1964 in Clarendon, Jamaica, as a youngster, Barrington Levy formed the Mighty Multitude with his cousin Everton Dacres. They started off playing the sound systems and cut their first single, “My Black Girl,” in 1977. All of 14, Levy broke out on his own the next year and recorded his debut solo single, “A Long Time Since We Don’t Have No Love.” It didn’t have much of an impact, however the teen’s appearances in the...
Winston Yellowman Foster was born January 15, 1956, in Kingston, Jamaica. He is a Jamaican reggae (rub-a-dub) and dancehall deejay, widely known as King Yellowman. He was popular in Jamaica in the 1980s, coming to prominence with a series of singles that established his reputation. Yellowman grew up in a Catholic orphanage called Alpha Boys School in Kingston, and was shunned due to having albinism, which was usually not socially accepted in Jamaica at the time. In the late 1970s Yellowman first gained wide attention when he won the Tastee Talent Contest in Kingston, Jamaica. In 1981, after becoming significantly popular throughout Jamaica, Yellowman became the first dancehall artist to be signed to a major American label CBS...
During his heyday, Shabba Ranks was arguably the most popular dancehall toaster in the world. He was a massive crossover success in the U.S., thanks to an openly commercial hybrid of reggae and hip-hop, and also to prominent duet partners like Maxi Priest, Johnny Gill, and KRS-One. All of this brought him several hit singles and albums on the R&B charts in the early '90s, and made him the first dancehall artist to win a Grammy. Ranks' distinctive, booming growl of a voice earned him many imitators, and his sex-obsessed lyrics -- while drawing criticism for their unrelenting "slackness" -- made him one of dancehall's hottest sex symbols. Ranks' early success also helped pave the way for even bigger crossovers by artists like Shaggy and...
Garnet Silk, born Garnet Damion Smith in Bromelia, in the parish of Manchester, Jamaica, on the second day of April 1966. Garnett gain his musical aspirations as a young boy and by his mid teens had taken on the moniker “little Bimbo”. But it was not until his move from rural Jamaica to central Kingston did the artist we know as Garnett Silk begin to take shape. After stints with various labels including stalwarts such as Sugar Minott Youth Promotions and Penthouse Records, he collided with the musical tag team Steele & Clevie, who some credit for discovering the silky smooth voice that became the signature sound behind the man we now know as Garnett Silk. During a brief sabbatical in 1992, Garnett had become an understudy of...
Ken Boothe was born in the Denham Town area of Kingston in 1948, the youngest of seven children, and began singing in school. His recording career began in the late 1950s when he formed a duo with his neighbour Stranger Cole as 'Stranger & Ken', the first tracks released by them being "Hush Baby" on the B-side of Cole's Island Records single "Last Love", and the "Thick in Love" single on R&B Records, both in 1963. They released several more popular singles between 1963 and 1965, including "World's Fair", "Hush", and "Artibella". Boothe also recorded as a duo with Roy Shirley (as Roy & Ken), releasing the "Paradise" single in 1966. His first solo tracks were recorded in 1966 after Clement "Coxsone" Dodd had signed him to the Studio...
Freddie McGregor was born June 27, 1956, in Clarendon Jamaica. Freddie McGregor have an incredibly steady career that started all the way back in the 1960s, when he was just seven years old. In 1963 Freddie McGregor joined with Ernest Wilson and Peter Austin to form The Clarendonians, and began to record for the Studio One label. McGregor worked with producer Niney the Observer during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1975, McGregor converted to Rastafari, which had a profound impact on his music. He is a member of the Twelve Tribes organization. His popularity soared in the early 1980s with the release of "Bobby Babylon". Other popular hits of McGregor's include "Big Ship", "Push Comes to Shove", "Just Don't Want to Be...
Dennis Brown was born on 1 February 1957 at Jubilee Hospital in Kingston, Jamaica. His father, Arthur, was a scriptwriter, actor, and journalist. Dennis Brown grew up in a large tenement yard between North Street and King Street in Kingston, with his parents, three elder brothers and a sister. Sadly, his mother passed away in the 1960s while he was still a child. Dennis Brown attended Central Branch Primary School and later St. Stephens College. He began his singing career at the early age of nine. His first public performance was at an end-of-term school concert. Brown's first professional appearance came at the age of eleven, when he visited a local club where his brother, Basil, was performing a comedy routine. There, he...
The Honourable James "Jimmy Cliff" Chambers OM, was born April 1, 1948. He is a ska and reggae singer, musician, and actor. He is the only currently living musician to hold the Order of Merit, the highest honour that can be granted by the Jamaican government for achievement in the arts and sciences. He is best known among mainstream audiences for songs such as "Sitting in Limbo," "You Can Get It If You Really Want," and "Many Rivers to Cross" from the soundtrack to The Harder They Come, which helped popularize reggae across the world and his covers of Cat Stevens' "Wild World" and Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now" from the film Cool Runnings. Jimmy Cliff was born in Somerton District of St. James. He began writing songs...
Paul "Frankie Dancehall Paul" Blake was born in 1965 in Jamaica. Frankie Paul was born almost totally blind. When Frankie Paul was four years old, he went on the Hope Ship where they worked with him for four years enabling him to see through his right eye; he later went to New York to obtain a pair of high-powered glasses that helped even further. He attended a Salvation Army school for the blind, where he first began singing. When Stevie Wonder visited the school, Paul sang for him, and an impressed Wonder encouraged him to go into music. Paul learned the piano, drums, and guitar while still in school. At the age of nine Frankie Paul was suspended for singing in school "too much". his punishment was that he would not be allowed...
Gregory Anthony Isaacs was born on July 15 1951, Fletchers Land, Kingston, Jamaica. Isaacs became a veteran of the talent contests that regularly took place in Jamaica. In 1968, he made his recording debut with a duet with Winston Sinclair, "Another Heartache", recorded for producer Byron Lee. The single sold poorly and Isaacs went on to team up with two other vocalists Penroe and Bramwell in the short-lived trio The Concords, recording for Rupie Edwards and Prince Buster. The trio split up in 1970 and Isaacs launched his solo career, initially self-producing recordings and also recording further for Edwards. In 1973 he teamed up with another young singer, Errol Dunkley to start the African Museum record label and shop, and soon...
Jacob Miller was born in Mandeville, central Jamaica on May 4, 1952 to Joan Ashman and Desmond Elliot. At the age of eight he moved to Kingston, Jamaica where he grew up with his maternal grandparents. In Kingston, Miller began spending time at popular studios including Clement Dodd’s Studio One. He recorded three songs for Dodd, including “Love is a Message” in 1968, which the Swaby brothers, (Horace, later called Augustus Pablo, and Garth) played at their Rockers Sound System. While the song did not garner much success nor maintain Dodd’s attention in Miller, it resulted in Pablo’s sustained interest in Miller. After the brothers launched their own label in 1972, Pablo recorded a version of “Love is a Message” named “Keep on...
Clive "Tenor Saw" Bright was born in Kingston, Jamaica, February 11, 1966. Tenor Saw was a prominent dancehall singer in the 1980s, and one of the most influential singers of the early digital reggae era. His best-known song was the 1985 hit "Ring the Alarm" on the "Stalag 17" riddim. Tenor Saw was raised in the Payne Avenue district of West Kingston. His first single, "Roll Call" was recorded in 1984 for George Phang's Powerhouse label, on the "Queen Majesty" rhythm. He moved on, with his friend Nitty Gritty, to work with Sugar Minott's Youth Promotion sound system and label, having hits in Jamaica with "Lots of Sign", "Pumpkin Belly", "Run Come Call Me", and "Fever". His most successful single, however, was "Ring the Alarm"...
Delroy Wilson was one of Jamaica's most soulful vocalists, and over a 40-year career the singer unleashed a flood of hits and a multitude of masterpieces. Born on October 5, 1948, in the Kingston neighborhood of Trenchtown, Wilson's phenomenal talent would be his ticket out of the ghetto, and his discovery by producer Coxsone Dodd in 1962 would change the path of Jamaican music. His first recording for Dodd, "If I Had a Beautiful Baby" did little, but the producer stuck by his prodigy, and his follow-up "Spit in the Sky," was a sound system smash. That number was Dodd's personally composed smack at rival Prince Buster, while Lee Perry penned Wilson's "Joe Liges" as a sharp rebuke aimed at Buster's "Bad Minded People." "Joe Liges"...