Ken Boothe

Gigs at Uppsala Reggae Festival:

Year	Speldag	Speltid	Scen	Gallery
2011	Saturday	19:15 - 20:15	Main Stage	Inga bilder

Ken Boothe is a real reggae heavyweight. He started his career as early as 1963, only 15 years old, in the singing duo Stranger & Ken along with Stranger Cole. Like so many other Jamaican artists he was inspired by the American soul. Where Pat Kelly took after Sam Cooke and the early Wailers took after the Impressions, Boothe himself took after Wilson Pickett. Boothe had the same down-to-earth, intense voice that made Picket to a star. Add his distinctive vibrato and you get a voice that is completely unique.

His solo career took off only after he had become a part of Coxsone Dodd's Studio One crew. With the help of Coxsone, he became one of the foreground figures in the rocksteady wave that swept over Jamaica in the second half of the 1960s, and was even knighted as "Mr. Rock Steady".

During the 1970s, he was like many other reggae artists influenced by Rastafari. Although the majority of Boothes songs was about love, there were exceptions. The hauntingly dark "Is It Because I'm Black" and the rasta-hymn "Black, Gold And Green" is good example of this. Other songs worth mentioning are "Let's Get It On", Boothes version of Marvin Gayes megahit, and "Silver Words" produced by Winston "Niney" Holness.

With his successful career and songs like "Artibella", "The Train Is Coming", "Freedom Street", "Crying Over You" and "Everything I Own" (which climbed to number one on the UK singles chart), Ken Boothe has an obvious place among the world's reggae legends.

Receive our newsletter: