Freddie McKay

Rocksteady vocalist Freddie McKay notched several successes during the 1960s, one of them initially credited to another artist, cut sides alongside the Soul Defenders and additional session ensembles, and collaborated with Jamaica’s leading reggae producers Duke Reid, Coxsone Dodd, and Prince Buster.

Believed to have entered the world toward the close of the 1940s in St. Catherine, McKay later laid down tracks for the Studio One and Treasure Isle imprints alongside the house bands the Revolutionaires, the G.G. Allstars, and the Soul Defenders; together with the last-named group he waxed “Picture on the Wall,” his most successful single, plus “High School Dance” and further pleasing though non-charting numbers such as “Old and Gray.” The anthology Wake Up Jamaica notes that one additional McKay hit, “Love Is a Treasure,” first appeared in the late 1960s under the Treasure Isle Boys name; its early-1970s reissue again misidentified the performer, this time as Tommy McCook’s All Stars. The attribution was finally corrected, after which several of Freddie McKay’s singles continued to surface as enduring favorites on ska and rocksteady anthologies in subsequent decades.