BRITAIN: Jamaican reggae pioneer Desmond Dekker, famed for the genre's first worldwide hit with Israelites, has died of a heart attack at his home in England, the Jamaica Observer reported yesterday. He was 64.
The singer/songwriter, whose 1960s fame was eclipsed the following decade by Bob Marley, died on Wednesday.
Although his recording career had been on the wane for decades, Dekker remained a popular concert draw in Europe.
He was born Desmond Dacres in the Jamaican capital of Kingston on July 16th, 1941, and was raised on a diet of songs by 1950s crooners such as Nat "King" Cole and Jackie Wilson.
After working initially as a welder alongside Marley, he began composing songs. He signed with Chinese-Jamaican music label owner Leslie Kong, and scored an immediate hit in 1963 with Honour Your Mother and Father. By 1966 he was a big star in his homeland, and he had his first taste of success in Britain.
In 1969, he enjoyed his biggest success with Israelites, four years before Marley truly brought reggae into the mainstream. The song's hard-luck lyrics - "Get up in the morning/Slaving for bread, sir" - delivered in Dekker's mellifluous voice, resonated around the world. It topped the charts in the UK and many other countries, and reached the top 10 in the US.
"It's about how hard things were for a lot of people in Jamaica - downtrodden, like the Israelites that led Moses to the Promised Land," Dekker would say.
He also enjoyed a UK hit in 1970 with a cover of Jimmy Cliff's You Can Get It If You Really Want. He recorded sporadically and mounted a short-lived comeback attempt in 1980 on the heels of a major ska revival. Four years later he was declared bankrupt.
Dekker was divorced, and had a son and a daughter. - (Reuters)