Excerpt from Jamaica Observer column published 30 March 2020
by Jean Lowrie-Chin
 |
| From Reggaeville.com |
The
tributes are many and heartfelt for Jamaica’s supreme lyricist Bob Andy. Thank
goodness he heard many before he passed. Over 20 top artistes gathered in
Kingston in 2011 to honour the great man. They included Marcia Griffiths who
had teamed with him as “Bob and Marcia” to cover Nina Simone’s “Young, Gifted
and Black”, a rendition which rose to Number Five in the UK and sold half a
million copies. Nadine Sutherland, Big Youth, Freddie McGregor, Luciano, Denyque,
Chevaughn, Protoje, Desi Jones & Friends, Lloyd Parkes and We the People
all sang and played their hearts out for the legend.
As I
write this, Roy Black is playing the Bob Andy classic “I’ve Got to Go Back
Home” on KLAS-FM – it lit up the dance floors of our youths. How we would sing
out the trumpet bars when the DJ stopped the music! Now he is playing one of Bob
Andy’s strong social commentary “Fire Burning”:
“I was
drawn into myself
Observing all this time
From every angle I could see
My people, you're meeting hell
Brothers have turned to crime
So they die from time to time
We'd like to ask you leaders
What have you got in mind
I see the fire spreading
It's getting hotter and hot
The haves will want to be
In the shoes of the have-nots
If the sign is on your door
Then you will be saved for sure
But if you are in pretence
You're on the wrong side of the fence.”
My husband Hubie recalls that the company he worked for in the seventies, Total Sounds, produced Bob Andy’s radical “Check it out”.
Observing all this time
From every angle I could see
My people, you're meeting hell
Brothers have turned to crime
So they die from time to time
We'd like to ask you leaders
What have you got in mind
I see the fire spreading
It's getting hotter and hot
The haves will want to be
In the shoes of the have-nots
If the sign is on your door
Then you will be saved for sure
But if you are in pretence
You're on the wrong side of the fence.”
My husband Hubie recalls that the company he worked for in the seventies, Total Sounds, produced Bob Andy’s radical “Check it out”.
“Open your eyes
It's time you realise
That the rise in the price
Is to make more money
For who's got plenty
And the trick of the trade
Is to keep all the hungry bellies empty”.
It's time you realise
That the rise in the price
Is to make more money
For who's got plenty
And the trick of the trade
Is to keep all the hungry bellies empty”.
On the Bob Andy
website, we learn that, “In
November 1987, Bob assumed the post of A&R and Promotions Director for Tuff
Gong (the group of companies founded by Bob Marley). … Bob's stay at Tuff Gong
provided him with many opportunities to express his life-long desire for higher
standards in Jamaican music, both in its business operations and in the quality
of its musical output.”
A
great legacy in so many spheres of Jamaican music – rest in peace Bob Andy.
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