SEVEN TO GET ROOTZ OF THE MUSIC AWARD AT SOUTH FLORIDA EVENT!

BY HOWARD CAMPBELL —
Observer senior reporter

Singer Larry Marshall, who some musicologists credit with performing the first reggae song (Nanny Goat) 49 years ago, is among seven honorees for the August 27 Rootz Of The Music event at Pompano Arts and Culture Centre in South Florida.

Marshall, 75, will be recognized alongside guitar virtuoso Ernie Ranglin, percussionist Larry McDonald, ska pioneer Eric “Monty” Morris and Australian guitarist Dennis Sindrey, a member of The Caribs band.

Larry Marshall

Evrel Grey and Horace Forbes complete the honour roll.

St Ann-born Marshall, who lives in South Florida, was employed in the pressing plant at Studio One during the late 1960s. According to popular lore, he was chosen by producer Clement Dodd to sing Nanny Goat in preference to a pre-teen Jacob Miller in 1968.

Though Marshall had been recording several years for different producers, he hit the mark along with vocal partner Alvin Leslie on Nanny Goat which featured Boris Gardiner on bass. Some reggae archivists the song marked the transition from rocksteady to reggae.

Marshall had other hit songs in Throw Me Corn and I Admire You but faded into obscurity by the 1980s.

First staged in 2011, Rootz Of The Music is the brainchild of Eugene Grey, a guitarist who has toured or recorded with Burning Spear, Culture and Kid Creole And The Coconuts.

Theme for this year’s show is ‘American Roots of Jamaican Music: The Legacy Featuring Eugene Grey’. It examines the impact American artistes had on the evolution of Jamaican popular music.

McDonald is one of Jamaican music’s unheralded heroes. Born in St Mary, he recorded and toured for many years with Carlos Malcolm and the Afro-Jamaicans, Toots And The Maytals, guitarist Taj Mahal and American poet/activist Gil Scott Heron.