Born around 1960 in Kingston, Jamaica, Wade entered the music scene in the mid-1970s and was quickly celebrated as Yabby You’s newest discovery through the Grove Music collective. His first breakthrough arrived in 1976 with ‘Black Is Our Colour’ on the freshly established Mango label. An interpretation of the Paragons’ ‘Happy Go Lucky Girl’ soon followed, showcasing his polished vocal style, and the track became an immediate success. That momentum produced a 1977 discomix pairing him with DJ Prince Pompado, backed by ‘I Kissed A Rose’. Turning again to Paragons material, he recorded ‘On The Beach’, another strong seller that also appeared in discomix form alongside DJ Ranking Trevor. Additional rocksteady covers included ‘Everybody Bawling’, ‘I Can’t Hide’ and ‘You Don’t Want Me’. In the early 1980s Wade worked with Dillinger on Oak Sound productions, joining the producer, the Tamlins, Al Campbell and Trinity on the popular ‘Five Man Army’. Further releases comprised ‘Kings Of Kings’, ‘Now I Know’ and, in tandem with Tommy McCook, ‘Riding Forward’. Nineteen eighty-one yielded additional hits via Linval Thompson productions: ‘Round The World’, ‘Tell Me What’s Going On’, ‘Poor And Humble’ and ‘Down In Iran’. Wade relocated to the Netherlands in 1983, where he cut a version of Lionel Richie’s ‘Lady’. A contract with Epic Records prompted a summer re-release of ‘Lady’, followed in the autumn by the weaker-performing ‘Try Again’. He maintained a recording career thereafter, yet never regained the stature achieved during his Yabby You period.
