Biography
Born around 1963 in Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies as Michael Johnson, Sassafras worked at the riding stables of Caymanas Park racecourse before entering the music business. Entrepreneurial Jack Scorpio, a frequent visitor to the track who had assembled his own well-known sound system during the early 1970s and moved into record production the following decade, chose the former stable hand for his debut session. That inaugural production featured Sassafras on “Pocomania Jump,” a track invoking the religious practices preserved in Jamaica since slavery. The release became an immediate success, prompting a wave of similarly themed recordings that included DJ Gregory Peck’s “Poco Man Jam.” Sassafras next issued “Calypso Jump,” another dancehall favorite, and acquired the nickname Horseman in acknowledgment of his racetrack background. He cut the combinations “Take Heed” with Johnny Clarke and “Modelling Crowd” with the Paragons; together the two artists served as principal DJs for the Black Scorpio sound system operating out of Waterhouse. During the mid-1980s he traveled to New York, performing on multiple sounds and gaining recognition abroad, then appeared at the Greater London Council’s Easter Reggae Festival in the UK alongside Roy Shirley, Leroy Smart, and Edi Fitzroy. In 1989 he joined Barrington Levy on “Step Up In Life,” a reworking of Toots and the Maytals’ “Pomps and Pride” that Sassafras co-produced with Jah Screw.
Albums
Singles
