Junior English

Born in 1951 in Kingston, Jamaica, b. Lindel Beresford English took to the stage while still a teenager and cut his first track, ‘Fay Is Gone’, for Prince Buster in 1965. He settled in Britain during the second half of the decade and finished his schooling there. A victory in a talent contest staged by the Palmer brothers—founders of Pama Records and, later, Jet Star—at Club 31 opened the next chapter; he became a member of the Magnets and recorded ‘Somewhere’ with them. Because audiences at the time favoured strictly Jamaican-style reggae, the group’s work gained little traction at home, so English spent the closing years of the 1960s on a European tour. Back in London he joined the Nighthawks, who issued the single ‘Jasmine’ together with a little-known album.

By 1970 English had returned to Britain and laid down ‘Miss Playgirl’, ‘Daniel’, ‘I Don’t Wanna Die’ and the well-received ‘Back On The Scene’. A long and fruitful partnership with producer Clement Bushay followed; their first collaboration, ‘Never Lose Never Win’, supplied the rhythm for the Trinity and Dillinger combination hit ‘Starsky And Hutch’. The same title served for an album that contained polished readings of Delano Stewart’s ‘Stay A Little Bit Longer’, the Chi-Lites’ ‘Bet You’ll Never Be Sorry’, Matumbi’s ‘After Tonight’ and the Royal Rasses’ ‘Humanity’. Another Bushay production, the October single ‘In Loving You’, topped the UK reggae chart for Christmas 1978. That achievement earned English the Afro-Caribbean Post Golden Sunrise Award as best male vocalist for the same year.

Further success arrived with ‘Natural High’, which lent its name to his second Bushay album—a self-produced set recorded at Channel One Studios with the Revolutionaries. In 1979 ‘I’ll Make It Up To You’ charted respectably on the reggae listings, as did the accompanying sides ‘Love And Key’ and ‘I Am The One You Love’. Throughout the 1980s he continued to score hits, among them ‘Daddy’s Home’, ‘Equal Love’ and the popular ‘Ready To Learn’, the last of which appeared on his own International English imprint. In 1985 he joined numerous other artists on the British Reggae Artists Famine Appeal single ‘Let’s Make Africa Green Again’. During the following decade he stayed in the public eye with versions of ‘Queen Majesty’, ‘Cruising’, ‘Ready To Learn’ and additional well-known standards.