Little Roy (born Earl Lowe in Whitfield Town, Kingston, Jamaica) is a reggae musician.[Bush, Nathan " Little Roy Biography", AllMusic, retrieved 2011-02-14]
Biography
Little Roy began his career at the age of 12 years in 1965 recording a few unsuccessful tracks with producers
Coxsone Dodd and
Prince Buster. He was the first to record a song with the word REGGAE with producer
Prince Buster who named him Little Roy.
[Larkin, Colin (1998) The Virgin Encyclopedia of Reggae, Virgin Books, , p. 172] He had his first
chart-topper with "Bongo Nyah" (1969)at the age of 16 years for Lloyd Daley ("the Matador"), the first song about the Rastafari movement to be successful commercially in Jamaica.
For his song "Don't Cross the Nation" (1970), Little Roy worked with the Wailers and producer Lee "Scratch" Perry. Roy worked with the late
Dennis Brown on the bass and
Leroy Sibbles on the song 'Tribal War'. Starting in 1972, Roy worked with Maurice "Scorcher" Jackson and his brother Munchie. Roy wrote and recorded the influential and well-received songs "Tribal War" and "Prophecy" in the 1970s.
George Nooks and John Holt recorded their own roots Rockers
discomix takes on Roy's "Tribal War" original composition, and the rhythm from "Prophecy" was later used by Steely & Clevie in 1990, leading to a hit record for
Freddie McGregor. Roy decided to re-issue some of his old material on an album titled
Prophesy.
A new album,
Live On, was released in 1991, and he worked with
Adrian Sherwood, 'Crucial' Tony Phillips, Carlton 'Bubblers' Ogilivie, Eskimo Fox, Mafia and Fluxy and B.B. Seaton on the 1996 roots rock album
Long Time, which featured a new take on an earlier single, "Righteous Man", which Roy had originally recorded in 1973 for Bullwackie
Lloyd Barnes.
Roy released another album in 2005,
Children of the Most High.
In May 2011 Little Roy collaborated with Prince Fatty and the Mutant Hi-Fi to record Sliver/Dive cover of Nirvana's early single. An album of Nirvana songs, Battle for Seattle, was released in September 2011 on Ark Recordings.[United Reggae, " Interview: Little Roy", retrieved 2011-06-29]
Discography
- Studio albums
-
Tribal War (1975)
-
Columbus Ship (1981), Tafari/Copasetic
-
Prophesy (1989)
-
Live On (1991)
-
Long Time (1996), On-U Sound
-
Gregory Isaacs meets Little Roy (1996)
-
More From A Little (1999)
-
Children of the Most High (2005)
-
Heat (2010), Pharos
-
Battle for Seattle (2011), Ark (UK chart peak: #111)
[http://zobbel.de/cluk/110917cluk.txt ]
-
Right Now (2016)
- Compilations
- Singles (partial)
-
1969 – Bongo Nyah/Bad Name (Little Roy and The Creations) (Camel, Randy's, Pama)
-
1969 – Without My Love/Here I Come Again (Little Roy and Winston Samuels) (Crab)
-
1970 – Scrooge/In The Days of Old (Camel)
-
1970 – You Run Come/Skank King (Camel)
-
1971 – Yester-Me Yester-You Yesterday/Yes Sir (Escort)
-
1977 – Prophecy (Morwell Esq)
-
1989 – Prophecy (Original Press)
-
2014 – Disaster and Signs (Tuff Scout)
-
2015 – The Right Way (Tuff Scout)
See also
-
List of reggae musicians
-
List of roots reggae artists
