Born Keith Anderson, Bob Andy ranks among reggae’s most pivotal singer-songwriters. Countless renditions of the material he penned for himself and fellow performers have elevated those compositions to the status of genre classics. Among the standout compositions he supplied to other vocalists are Ken Boothe’s “I Don’t Want to See You Cry,” Delroy Wilson’s “It’s Impossible (Impossible Love),” and Marcia Griffiths’ “Feel Like Jumping,” the last of which was co-authored with Jackie Mittoo.
Andy first drew notice in the 1960s as a founding member of the rocksteady vocal ensemble the Paragons. His individual path opened toward the end of that decade with a series of singles cut at Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One; those recordings, among them “I’ve Got to Go Back Home,” “Too Experienced,” and “Unchained,” were gathered in 1972 on the album The Bob Andy Songbook. Between 1969 and the early 1970s he joined forces with Marcia Griffiths to issue several singles and full-length projects under the name Bob & Marcia, scoring U.K. successes with “Young, Gifted and Black” and “Pied Piper.”
Working alone, Andy issued The Music Inside Me in 1975 and Lots of Love and I in 1977; both collections contained enduring tracks such as “Fire Burning,” “The Ghetto Stays in the Mind,” and “Feel the Feeling.” In 1978 he stepped away from music for five years to pursue acting. The subsequent albums Friends (1983) and Freely (1988) appeared on his own I-Anka Records imprint, which also released the Mad Professor–mixed Bob Andy’s Dub Book in 1989. During the latter half of the 1980s he served as A&R director at Tuff Gong Records, the company Bob Marley established in the early 1970s. Trojan Records issued the retrospective Fire Burning in 1995, while VP Records brought out the Willie Lindo–produced Hanging Tough two years later.
The Jamaican government presented Andy with the Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander in 2006 in recognition of his role in shaping Jamaican music. A large-scale tribute concert celebrating his life and catalog took place in Kingston in 2011, after which he maintained an active schedule of songwriting, live appearances, and recording.
