Biography
Bunny Lion remains an enigmatic presence in reggae, having issued only one album under that alias. Observers long assumed the project represented Linval Thompson working under a pseudonym, yet disclosures that surfaced in the 2010s identified the artist as Puddy Roots—also known as Puddy Lion and a vocalist with Killamanjaro Sound System. Born in 1957, Puddy performed with Jamaican sound systems such as Arrows and spent frequent time at Randy's, the record shop owned by Vincent "Randy" Chin, who later became president of VP Records. Still operating in a DJ style as Puddy Lion, he was recruited by singer and producer Thompson to voice material drawn from Linval's albums I Love Marijuana and Love Is the Question. The resulting 1979 album Red appeared exclusively in the U.K. on the Starlight label. Thompson attributed the Bunny Lion name to a possible misreading of the master-tape labels by Starlight, though the detail carried little weight once Puddy abandoned deejaying for conventional singing under the Puddy Roots moniker. Reggae listeners commonly mistook Bunny Lion for Thompson himself adopting a DJ approach. When the scarce album was reissued in 2014 by Fantasy Memory, interviews with both Linval and Puddy established the performer's true identity.
Albums