Singer who once beat Bob Marley in a ‘battle of the bands’
JIMMY RILEY, who has died of cancer aged 68, was a Jamaican singersongwriter who scored numerous hits both as a member of vocal harmony groups and as a solo artist.
The second of eight children, he was born Martin Norman Riley on May 22 1954 in the west Kingston slum of Jones Town. His father worked as a night watchman at the Myers rum plant, his mother as a shift-worker at a nearby clothing factory.
At Kingston Senior School he came into contact with such talented vocalists as Alton Ellis and Carl Dawkins, while his close friendship with Slim Smith soon brought him honorary membership of the Techniques. Since there was no room for him to join that group, however, Riley formed the rival Sensations band with Cornell Campbell, Aaron “Dego” Davis, and Buster Riley, just as the ska style began to wane.
A successful audition for Duke Reid yielded the hits Everyday is Just a Holiday and Those Guys, and in 1967 Riley joined Slim Smith and Lloyd Charmers in a new vocal group, the Uniques, the partnership yielding an impressive string of hits, including Let Me Go Girl, Watch This Sound, Out Of Love, My Conversation, and Build My World Around You. The group beat Bob Marley and the Wailers at the “Battle of the Bands” competition at the Ward Theatre, and were employed by Prince Buster and Ken Khouri as backing vocalists.
Through the encouragement of the producer Bunny Lee, Riley then went solo, working closely with Lee and his fellow producer Lee “Scratch” Perry into the 1970s. He gave coaching to up-and-coming artists such as Dave Barker and helped shape some of the Wailers’ biggest hits for Perry, who also issued Riley’s rude ditty, Self Control. A cover of the Staples Singers’ When
Will We Be Paid was also creditable, though not particularly popular.
In the mid-1970s, after Riley recorded Eat Where
You Sleep, the London-based producer Tony Ashfield offered to record an album with him, and Riley also put Ashfield in touch with the reggae singer John Holt whose popular The Further
You Look Ashfield cut with Riley’s assistance.
Since most of Riley’s
family had moved to the Bronx, he began spending time in New York, so his own album for Ashfield took longer to finish, and the subsequent collapse of Trojan Records meant that it was never issued. Nevertheless, Riley recorded some great singles for Lee “Scratch” Perry in this era, with Hypocrites, Sons of Negus, I Man Stand Still, and a sensitive reggae reading of Bobby Womack’s Woman’s Got To Have It among the most noteworthy.
In the late 1970s, after covering Summertime with Ossie Hibbert and issuing the self-produced Give Thanks And Praise, Riley
released the albums Tell The Youth The Truth, Majority Rule and Showcase, all of which deserved wider distribution than they received. After a fallow period, Riley finally scored a No1 solo hit, teaming with Sly and Robbie for a re-cut of the Uniques’ Love And
Devotion, which led to the acclaimed Rydim Driven album, released by Island in 1981. Put The People First was released by Shanachie the following year; but Riley somehow failed to maintain momentum and subsequent albums were of varying quality.
A move to Miami to open a record shop kept him out of the limelight in the late 1980s, but on his return to Jamaica Riley began nurturing new talent from the producer’s chair, issuing records on his own Love Promotion label. His 1997 release of Anthony B’s Waan
Back was particularly successful. He also helped his son Tarrus to become one of Jamaica’s most successful performing artists, collaborating with him on numerous singles, of which Pull Up Selector (2007) was the most popular.
He is survived by his wife Sandra and several children. Jimmy Riley, born May 22 1947, died March 23 2016