Thank You, Byron Lee
I grew up listening to Byron Lee. There was Byron Lee...and there was Bob Marley. Definitely a big deal. And then of course there was Ashford & Simpson, Whitney Houston, and countless other disco, pop, and soul artists that were playing in my household in the early 80s. Blondie. Music was music, and good music was good music. But of the most memorable artists, one of them was definitely Byron Lee. He was raised in Manchester parish, as were my parents. Born in my dad's hometown of Christiana in 1935, and he trained in music in my mother's hometown of Mandeville . The son of an Afro-Jamaican mother, and a Chinese father, Byron Lee was a young athlete and member of the Jamaican national soccer team before his deep journey into music began. It was while playing for his college soccer team "The Dragonaires" that Byron and his teammate Carl Brady claimed the name for their new band. They began playing ska and mento, but it was in calypso music that they found...