Dennis Brown was born on 1 February 1957 at Jubilee Hospital in
Kingston, Jamaica.
[4] His father Arthur was a
scriptwriter, actor, and journalist, and he grew up in a large tenement yard between North Street and King Street in Kingston with his parents, three elder brothers and a sister, although his mother died in the 1960s.
[4][5] He attended Central Branch Primary School and later St. Stephens College. He began his singing career at the age of nine, while still at junior school, with an end-of-term concert the first time he performed in public, although he had been keen on music from an even earlier age, and as a youngster was a keen fan of American balladeers such as
Brook Benton,
Sam Cooke,
Frank Sinatra, and
Dean Martin.
[4] He cited
Nat King Cole as one of his greatest early influences.
[4] He regularly hung around JJ's record store on Orange Street in the
rocksteady era and his relatives and neighbours would often throw Brown pennies to hear him sing in their yard.
[4] 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, and where he made a guest appearance with the club's resident group, the Fabulous Falcons (a group which included
Cynthia Richards,
David "Scotty" Scott, and
Noel Brown).
[4] On the strength of this performance he was asked to join the group as a featured vocalist.
[4] When the group performed at a
JLP conference at the National Arena, Brown sang two songs -
Desmond Dekker's "Unity" and
Johnnie Taylor's "Ain't That Loving You" - and after the audience showered the stage with money, he was able to buy his first suit with the proceeds.
[4] Bandleader
Byron Lee performed on the same bill, and was sufficiently impressed with Brown to book him to perform on package shows featuring visiting US artists, where he was billed as the "Boy Wonder".
[4] As a young singer he was influenced by older contemporaries such as
Delroy Wilson (who he later cited as the single greatest influence on his style of singing),
[6] Errol Dunkley,
John Holt,
Ken Boothe, and
Bob Andy.
[4] Brown's first
recording was an original song called "Lips of Wine" for producer
Derrick Harriott, but when this was not released, he recorded for
Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's
Studio One label, and his first session yielded the
single "No Man is an Island", recorded when Brown was aged twelve and released in late 1969.
[7] The single received steadily increasing airplay for almost a year before becoming a huge hit throughout Jamaica.
[7] Brown recorded up to a dozen sessions for Dodd, amounting to around thirty songs, and also worked as a backing singer on sessions by other artists, including providing harmonies along with
Horace Andy and
Larry Marshall on
Alton Ellis's Sunday Coming album.
[7][8] Brown was advised by fellow Studio One artist Ellis to learn guitar to help with his songwriting, and after convincing Dodd to buy him an instrument, was taught the basics by Ellis.
[7] These Studio One recordings were collected on two albums,
No Man is an Island and If I Follow my Heart (the title track penned by Alton Ellis), although Brown had left Studio One before either was released.
[9] He went on to record for several producers including
Lloyd Daley ("Baby Don't Do It" and "Things in Life"),
Prince Buster ("One Day Soon" and "If I Had the World"), and
Phil Pratt ("Black Magic Woman", "Let Love In", and "What About the Half"), before returning to work with Derrick Harriott, recording a string of popular singles including "Silhouettes", "Concentration", "He Can't Spell", and "Musical Heatwave", with the pick of these tracks collected on the Super Reggae and Soul Hits
album in 1973.
[10] Brown also recorded for
Vincent "Randy" Chin ("Cheater"),
Dennis Alcapone ("I Was Lonely"), and
Herman Chin Loy ("It's Too Late" and "Song My Mother Used to Sing") among others, with Brown still at school at this stage of his career.
[11][
edit]International success
In 1972, Brown began an association that would result in his breakthrough as an internationally successful artist; He was asked by
Joe Gibbs to record an album for him, and one of the tracks recorded as a result, "Money in my Pocket", was a hit with UK reggae audiences and quickly became a favourite of his live performances. This original version of "Money in my Pocket" was in fact produced by
Winston "Niney" Holness on behalf of Gibbs, with musical backing from the
Soul Syndicate.
[12] In the same year, Brown performed as part of a Christmas morning showcase in
Toronto,
Canada, along with Delroy Wilson, Scotty, Errol Dunkley, and the Fabulous Flames, where he was billed as the "Boy Wonder of Jamaica" and was considered the star of the show in a local newspaper review.
[12] The song's popularity in the UK was further cemented with the release a
deejay version, "A-So We Stay (Money in Hand)", credited to
Big Youth and Dennis Brown, which outsold the original single and topped the Jamaican singles chart.
[12] Brown and Holness became close, even sharing a house in Pembroke Hall.
[8] Brown followed this with another collaboration with Holness on "Westbound Train", which was the biggest Jamaican hit of summer 1973,
[13] and Brown's star status was confirmed when he was voted Jamaica's top male vocalist in a poll by Swing magazine the same year.
[13] Brown followed this success with "Cassandra" and "No More Will I Roam", and tracks such as "Africa" and "Love Jah", displaying Brown's
Rastafari beliefs, became staples on
London's
sound system scene.
[13] In 1973, Brown was hospitalized due to fatigue caused by overwork, although at the time rumours spread that he only had one lung and had only a week to live, or had contracted
tuberculosis.
[13] He was advised to take an extended break from performing and concentrated instead on his college studies.
[13]
Brown returned to music and toured the United Kingdom for the first time in late summer 1974 as part of a Jamaican showcase, along with
Cynthia Richards, Al Brown,
Sharon Forrester, and
The Maytals, after which he was invited to stay on for further dates (where he was backed by
The Cimarons, staying in the UK for another three months.
[14] While in the UK, he recorded for the first time since his hospitalization, working with producer
Sydney Crooks, and again backed by the Cimarons.
[14] While Brown was in the UK, Gibbs released an album collecting recordings made earlier in Jamaica, released as The Best of Dennis Brown, and Brown's first single to get a proper UK release was issued on the Synda label - "No More Will I Roam".
[15] He returned to Jamaica for Christmas, but six weeks later was back in the UK, now with Holness in tow as his business manager, to negotiate a record deal with
Trojan Records, the first Brown album to be released as a result being Just Dennis, although the pair would be left out of pocket after Trojan's collapse and subsequent buyout by Saga Records.
[16] On their return to Jamaica, Brown and Holness resumed recording in earnest with tracks for a new album, including "So Long Rastafari", "Boasting", and "Open the Gate".
[17] During 1975, Brown also recorded one-off sessions for
Sonia Pottinger ("If You leave Me") and
Bunny Lee ("So Much Pain", a duet with
Johnny Clarke), and the first recordings began to appear on Brown's new DEB Music label.
[18] In the wake of the Trojan collapse, Brown and Holness arranged a deal with local independent label owners Castro Brown (who ran Morpheus Records) and Larry Lawrence (Ethnic Fight) to distribute their releases in the UK.
[19] Brown saw the UK as the most important market to target and performed for five consecutive nights at the Georgian Club in
Croydon to raise funds to start his new DEB Music label with Castro Brown.
[20] In early 1976, Castro secured a deal with
Radio London disc jockey Charlie Gillett for Morpheus (and hence DEB) output to be issued through the latter's Oval Records, which had a distribution deal with
Virgin Records, but after a dispute over Castro's separate supply of these records to London record shops, the deal was scrapped and the early DEB releases suffered from a lack of promotion.
[21] Later that year, Brown voiced two tracks at
Lee "Scratch" Perry's
Black Ark studio, "Take a Trip to Zion" and "Wolf and Leopard", the latter of which was a massive hit in Jamaica and would prove to be one of Brown's most popular songs, with a lyric criticizing those criminals who "rode the natty dread bandwagon".
[22] Brown confirmed in an interview in
Black Echoes that he had parted company with Holness, stating that "I was going along with one man's ideas for too long. Niney was trying to find a new beat at all times, which was disconcerting, so I hadn't been working with my true abilities. Now I know that I can produce myself".
[23]Brown began working again with Joe Gibbs, with an agreement that in return for studio time for his own productions, Brown would allow Gibbs use of any rhythm recorded in the process.
[24] The first album from this arrangement, the 1977 release
Visions of Dennis Brown, gave him his biggest success so far, blending conscious themes and love songs, and confirming Brown's transformation from child star to grown up artist.
[25] The biblical-themed sleeve and portrait of
Haile Selassie on the back complemented the
roots reggae tracks on the album, including "Repatriation", "Jah Can Do it", and
cover versions of
Earl 16's "Malcolm X" and
Clive Hunt's "Milk and Honey". The album immediately entered the Black Echoes chart and stayed there well into the following year, although it was only available in the UK as an expensive import.
[26] Visions... was voted reggae album of the year by
Melody Maker writers and was given the same award by readers of Black Echoes.
[26] A reissued "Wolf and Leopard" single, and the eventual album release of the same name also sold well in the UK, both topping the Black Echoes chart.
[27]
Brown toured the UK in Autumn 1977 with Big Youth, and described the tour: "It's like I was appointed to deliver certain messages and now is the time to deliver them".
[28] He had also begun producing recordings by his protege,
Junior Delgado. In 1978, Brown moved to live in London, and set up premises in Battersea Rise, near
Clapham Junction to relaunch the DEB Music label with Castro Brown, with artists featured on the label including Junior Delgado,
15.16.17,
Bob Andy, Lennox Brown, and later,
Gregory Isaacs.
[29] Brown had further success himself with a
discomix of "How Could I Leave You", a version of The Sharks' rocksteady standard "How Could I Live" with accompanying toast by
Prince Mohamed. In March 1978, Brown flew to Jamaica, where he was booked at the last minute to perform at the
One Love Peace Concert at the National Arena, backed by
Lloyd Parks' We The People Band.
[30] Visions of Dennis Brown was given a wider distribution via a deal between Lightning Records and
WEA and topped the UK reggae album chart in September 1978, this chart run lasting for five months.
[31] In August 1978, Brown returned to the UK, bringing Junior Delgado with him, and DEB Music released a series of singles, although they sold moderately compared to the label's earlier successes, but in the same month, Brown's breakthrough single was first released. Initially released as a discomix featuring a new version of "Money in my Pocket" and the deejay version "Cool Runnings" by Price Mohamed, which became unavailable for a time after quickly selling out its first pressing, this single gave Brown his first
UK Top 40 hit, reaching #14 the following year and becoming one of the biggest international hits in Jamaica's history,
[32][33] after crossing over first into
soul clubs and then
rock clubs.
[34]This success led to Brown featuring on the cover of the
NME in February 1979.
Brown's next two albums were both released on DEB - So Long Rastafari and Joseph's Coat of Many Colours, although the label was closed down in 1979, after which Brown again did the rounds of Jamaica's top producers, as well as continuing self-productions with singles such as "The Little Village" and "Do I Worry?" in 1981.
[35]
