Chris Blackwell- Forever tied to Reggae’s global success
The most far-reaching element of Jamaica’s culture has been its music and it is through its music that Jamaica has succeeded ahead of most countries in exporting its culture around the world. Jamaica’s music touches more people globally than any other aspect of the nation’s culture, a feat that would have been difficult to achieve without the contribution of Christopher Percy Gordon Blackwell.
How Blackwell started
In 1958, Chris Blackwell, reportedly, had a near-death experience as a boating excursion he was on with two friends went horribly wrong. The vessel ran out of fuel and eventually drifted ashore along the island’s south coast. Blackwell figuring, he could search for help eventually came across a Rastafarian man (at the time Rastas were outcasts in Jamaica and feared as “black heart men”) but this Rasta man took Blackwell into his community, offering him food, water, and a place to rest. The encounter would set Blackwell on a remarkable path which he would pursue through music, with Jamaica at its centre. Blackwell was an Englishman, born in Westminster, London, in 1937. His parents resided in Jamaica, and they made their wealth trading in sugar and rum and local real estate holdings
Jamaica gave him the start
At age 17 after being expelled from school in England, Blackwell returned to Jamaica where he eventually began peddling records around the island to sound men including Duke Reid, Coxsone, the brothers Vincent and George of the King Edwards the Giant sound system as well as supplying the 63 juke boxes he owned that were littered across the island. The experience served him well as it brought him in contact with what the people were listening to. It taught him the value of the sound system and the sound man as the barometer for what songs people loved. Ultimately the thought occurred that he should make his own records. And he eventually did when he recorded the album Lance Hayward at the Half Moon Hotel. It was released on his newly formed Island Records label with address as Box 258, Jamaica, West Indies. Blackwell was 22 years of age at the time and, in his own words, this was what he knew he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
Abundance of talent
Blackwell’s decision was timely as it coincided with a period of rapid change in the island’s music scene. For one, Stanley Motta had begun to commercially record people’s voices at his business establishment located at Hanover Street in Kingston. Theophilus Beckford had recorded “Easy snapping”, a piano led joint that Coxsone kept as a special for his sound and which drew dance fans by the hundreds. Other locals had started to record; their numbers swelled by the local talent contests. The confluence of circumstances provided a pool of talent from which Blackwell was able to snatch. Wilfred Jackie Edwards was the first grab Blackwell made, followed by Owen Gray, and Laurel Aitken. It was a period when Jamaican sound men were desperate for unique material to trounce each other as foreign records had run their course among the set owners. Moreover, the success of local talent shows meant a ready and eager crop of newly minted talent eager to hear their voices on record.
The first hits
Laurel Aitken’s “Boogie in My Bones” provided Blackwell with his first hit and like a magnet, Blackwell’s connections helped to anchor people like the Australian engineer Graeme Goodall, the Australian musicians known as the Caribs who played at the Glass Bucket Club into the Jamaican recording scene. Those connections similarly extended outwards and helped to push Aitken’s record into the British market. Island Records was strengthened with the addition of Goodall and Leslie Kong as shareholders, each holding 24 per cent of the shares apiece. The company’s distribution capabilities and connections were used to push the output of several local artistes into Britain. Jimmy Cliff’s “Hurricane Hattie”, Bob Marley’s “Judge Not”, Wilfred Jackie Edwards, and Owen Gray. That recording artistes had the opportunity for their music to be taken overseas provided further impetus. Blackwell departed Jamaica’s shores just before the bells of independence stopped sounding in 1962.
Pulling stumps for England
There was a robust market for Jamaican music in the UK and Blackwell’s Island Records saw that imports far outstripped the number of copies being sold in Jamaica. In any event, the winds of independence echoed the strong Jamaican persona that would push the country forward in the new post-colonial period. Things had changed dramatically, and Blackwell opted to apply what he had learned in Jamaica in Britain. He believed that, as an Englishman, he was on “the wrong side of history”. He arrived in Britain at an opportune time as the British blues boom was just beginning. His first major hit, nevertheless, came from Jamaica where he still maintained links. Those links identified the precocious talent of 16-year-old Jamaican Millie Small. Her distinct, high-pitched voice had intrigued him on a song he heard back on the island, and he decided to use Millie’s voice on a Barbie Gaye song “My Boy Lollipop”. The song worked and sped to sales of over of over seven million copies.
Fortune and favours
He would find similar success with Jimmy Cliff whom he, reportedly, backed in the cult film The Harder They Come and which is credited with introducing reggae music to the British and North American audiences. When Cliff decided to sign with Columbia Records the decision opened a void in the Island Records’ lineup of artistes which included some of the biggest names and Blackwell, reportedly, reached out to the Wailers but was rebuffed by the group. However, his fortune changed when the group’s tour of the UK in 1970/71 fell apart and Marley approached Blackwell for assistance to get the group back home to Jamaica. According to reports, Blackwell provided the group with £4,000.00 for which work on an album was promised. The result was the ground-breaking Catch A Fire album and the beginning of one of reggae music’s biggest and most productive relationships.
Island’s reggae line-up
Through Island, Blackwell introduced reggae to the broader world’s musical consciousness. Blackwell was instrumental in creating Bob Marley’s breakthrough after deciding to market him as a rock star. He surmised the rhythm in the music should be a bit more rock to reach that wide, college audience, and it worked. He went on to raise the music’s profile to higher levels by championing artistes such as Toots and the Maytals, Burning Spear, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Third World, Inner Circle, Black Uhuru, Sly and Robbie, Luciano, and Buju Banton, as well as British reggae acts like Steel Pulse, Aswad, and Linton Kwesi Johnson.
