By Roy Black— Ernie Smith— Last week’s Music Diaries revealed how songwriters, especially those in early popular music, made heroes and heroines out of singers through their writing, while they themselves dwelled in the shadows. The twist to that is that several songwriters who had no intention of, or never even dreamed of becoming singers, ended up in that field by some strange hand of fate. One such example of this is the Jamaican rocksteady and reggae crooner Ernie Smith, who, for the purpose of this retrospective, is particularly timely as he celebrates his 72nd birthday this past week. Smith’s entry into the entertainment business as a singer came by chance in 1967 when he visited the Federal Recording Studios at 220 Marcus Garvey Drive (known then as Foreshore Road) with a song he … Read entire article »