Clinton Fearon

Clinton Fearon followed the familiar route taken by numerous reggae performers who reached their late teens during the closing years of the 1960s and the opening stretch of the 1970s. Born in St. Andrew in 1951, he spent his early years traveling between rural communities alongside his father and stepmother before arriving in Kingston in 1967. Shortly after settling in the capital he assembled a vocal trio with several companions, yet the project dissolved without producing any recordings. His breakthrough arrived around 1970 when he linked up with Albert Griffiths and Errol Grandison to establish the Gladiators, an alliance that would prove both artistically defining and commercially rewarding.

Errol Grandison departed soon afterward and Gallimore Sutherland stepped in, locking the revised trio into regular sessions at Studio One. There the Gladiators cut their own spiritually charged material while also supporting leading acts such as Stranger Cole and Burning Spear. By roughly 1974 the group had shifted to Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Black Ark facility, again laying down their own tracks and supplying backing for additional artists, most notably the distinctive vocalist Vivian “Yabby U” Jackson. By then an experienced bassist as well as a capable singer and songwriter, Fearon found himself repeatedly called upon to lay down bass parts for other sessions, often without formal credit or steady compensation. His playing appears on Perry’s distinctive “Roast Fish and Cornbread” and on numerous further Black Ark recordings whose documentation has since vanished.

Toward the end of the 1980s Fearon relocated to the United States and took up residence in Seattle, where he assembled the short-lived Defenders. That ensemble issued a single EP before disbanding. In 1993 he launched the Boogie Brown Band, the group with which he has since released four albums: Disturb the Devil, Mystic Whisper, What a System, and Soon Come.