![]() He also found favor with the early skinheads, thanks to a jump beat-driven tune called "Apollo 12" that was released in 1970, even as he continued to keep his hand in ballads with releases such as "Three Coins in the Fountain." He enjoyed some further success fronting the Maximum Band (on the Fab Records imprint of Melodisc) with the ballad "Cupid," which charted in 1968. By 1966 he was well known in England as a soul singer as well as for his ska and reggae sides, and made the switch to rocksteady easily enough, cutting sides for producer Sir Clancy Collins, and also licensing some songs to the new Trojan Records label - his versions of the ballads "These Foolish Things" and "Always" reflected the soft ballad style for which he was known at the time. ![]() He toured Europe in 1964, doing mostly soul music, and also signed with Blackwell's now established Island Records label. Gray recorded for Melodisc, which had previously licensed some of his Jamaican sides, and he was soon established in London, finding a large and serious club audience. With advance work like that going on without his direct input, he could hardly resist the opportunity to take the leap to the next career step, and cultivate a London audience from London, and in the spring of 1962 he moved there. It was also a group of sides that he cut for Coxsone Dodd that resulted in Gray becoming the first solo Jamaican artist to have an LP of Jamaican popular music (as opposed to calypso music and folk songs) released in England - the Esquire imprint Starlite Records combined a bunch of them in 1961 as Owen Gray Sings, which was also released in Jamaica the album never sold even moderately well, but it was a beginning, and soon he had competing London labels issuing different tracks. Released in Jamaica, it hit the top chart spot on the island, and the record was also issued in England through the jazz label Esquire, and sold surprisingly well - a fact undoubtedly noted by Blackwell, who began to suspect around this time that there were enough Jamaican émigrés in England to make a viable business of recording and releasing music aimed at them.īack in Kingston, Gray found himself in high demand, and his voice was quickly captured - working in idioms from rock & roll to American-style R&B - on tape by producers Leslie Kong, Prince Buster, Duke Reid, and, most importantly, Coxsone Dodd, who was just starting up his legendary Studio One label at the time Gray's "On the Beach" (which featured local trombone virtuoso Don Drummond) was among the very earliest releases on that label. ![]() Gray's breakthrough came in 1960 when he recorded "Please Don't Let Me Go" with the Caribs (including guitarist Ernest Ranglin on his first recording session) for a young would-be record producer from England named Chris Blackwell, who had begun to dabble in Jamaican music in between deciding what he wanted to do with his life. In a sense, Gray and his contemporaries could not have timed their lives and careers better, as Jamaica's musical life was ready to bloom - the world was already listening to the sounds of calypso music in the late '50s, initially by way of Trinidad (and pioneering figures such as Sir Lancelot) and more recently by such island-descended figures as Harry Belafonte and Lord Burgess, and Jamaica, which was already moving toward independence from Great Britain, was about to experience a cultural renaissance as well. His father was a career military man, but the younger Gray set his sights on music as a career early on, and by his teens he was an experienced singer and performer - he attended the Alpha School, whose other alumni included such future legends as Tommy McCook and Dizzy Johnny Moore, and by 19 he was ready to turn professional. ![]() He seemed destined for stardom at an early age - born in Kingston in 1939, he showed an affinity for music and a love of singing very early in life, winning his first talent contest at the age of nine and also distinguishing himself in the local church choir, where he sang first tenor (and his mother played piano). ![]() Owen Gray was Jamaica's first home-grown singing star, and the first Jamaican singer to achieve recognition (and stardom) doing something other than calypso music. ![]()
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