The ‘Striker’ and the
VENERABLE guitarist Earl “Chinna” Smith and influential producer Bunny “Striker” Lee’s friendship was more than music.
It was a bond that went back to the 1950s.
“Bunny Lee used to hold mi as a baby. Is like my mother an’ Striker mother an’ father grow up in di same neighbourhood of Greenwich Town in Kingston 13. My father use to have a sound system called Western, an’ as a youth, Bunny Lee used to operate my father sound. So, it was more of a family thing,” Smith, 65, told the Jamaica Observer.
“One of di greatest things, I will never forget dat as long as I live, on my birthday,
6th of August dis year, him call mi an’ sing mi Happy Birthday. I will hold that forever.”
Lee, who had been ailing for some time, died last Tuesday at the University Hospital of the West Indies in St Andrew. He was 79.
Smith — the 2013 recipient of a silver Musgrave
Medal for his contribution to Jamaican music — remembers Lee for his ability to identify talent and knack for creating hit songs.
“If him tell yuh sey something ah go happen, it will happen. I remember wi band Soul Syndicate; him did rate di band as a band weh come from inna him area. He carried us to di studio an’ we became like one of di greatest bands because he saw that in our future. Di same way he would see artiste an’ recognise their talent an’ jus’ know...him have vision,” said Smith. “A lot of these talent that you would never recognise, he would jus’ see it fast. So when him tell someone seh: ‘Dis going be di thing’, people see it work. He still had that vision right up until his ‘going out’. Him have dat vision of knowing what to do an’ who are di people to bring in to create dat magic. Striker Lee is a guru of Jamaican music.”
Soul Syndicate was one of the top session bands from the early 1970s to the mid1980s. In the 1970s they also recorded for producers Keith Hudson and Winston “Niney” Holness. In addition to Smith, its core members were: drummer Carlton “Santa” Davis, bassist George “Fully” Fullwood, rhythm guitarist Tony Chin, and keyboardist Bernard “Touter” Harvey.
The nucleus of Soul