Dennis Brown |
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Thu. July 01.1999 9:59 PM EDT |
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Best Of '99: Lovers-Rock Pioneer Dennis Brown DiesHe was known for a breezy style over three decades of recording. by Contributing Editor Christopher O'Connor |
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Dennis Brown remained popular in Jamaica for three decades. ( ) |
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[Editor's note: Over the holiday season, SonicNet is looking back at 1999's top stories, chosen by our editors and writers. This story originally ran on Thursday, July 1.] Jamaican reggae singer Dennis Brown, best known for pioneering
Brown, whose hits included 1972's "Money in My Pocket" (RealAudio excerpt), was admitted to the hospital at 10:30 p.m. local time Wednesday and died eight hours later, according to Carl Davis, director of University Hospital of the West Indies. Though Reuters news service reported that Brown died of upper respiratory failure, Davis said an official cause of death could not be determined until an autopsy is performed Friday. Josh Blood, a spokesperson at the Cambridge, Mass., roots-reggae label Heartbeat Records, recalled hearing from a number of sources that Brown had been in poor health for the past year. Heartbeat released five Brown albums in the U.S., and Blood remembered Brown as a passionate singer and performer who never strayed from the traditional rhythms and cadences of reggae over three decades. "He has been amazingly consistent from age 13 ... and I would put him in the top three reggae performers of all time [with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh]," Blood said. Blood said that unlike Marley, a major star in Jamaica in the 1960s whose local popularity waned over the next decade as he became revered in the rest of the world, Brown maintained his fanbase on the island and was still one of its most highly regarded singers. Brown began recording at the famed Studio One recording facility in Jamaica in 1968, producing such sweet love songs as "No Man Is an Island" and "Silhouettes." He went on to develop the genre known as lovers rock, a light, breezy style largely devoid of the political vitriol that often defined Marley's output. By the end of his career, Brown was popular enough to bill himself as the "Crown Prince of Reggae." His first album for Heartbeat was Some Like It Hot (1992), a compilation of such mid-1970s material as "Westbound Train" (RealAudio excerpt). His final album, Bless Me Jah, was released on R.A.S. in May. |
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