STORY · DANCEHALL
Black Uhuru's revolving door
Well supported
One harmony group's lead-singer chair changed hands more than almost any other in reggae, and each singer carried it somewhere new.
Black Uhuru launched more solo careers than any other reggae vocal group, its Waterhouse-rooted sound passed from Garth Dennis and Don Carlos through Michael Rose to Junior Reid.
One name, many voices
Most reggae vocal groups are remembered for a stable lineup. Black Uhuru is remembered for the opposite: a name that kept its identity while the singer at its centre changed again and again, each departure seeding a notable solo career.
Duckie Simpson founded the group in Kingston's Waterhouse district in the early 1970s with Garth Dennis, previously of the Wailing Souls, and Don Carlos. Carlos sang lead on the group's early, Prince Jammy-produced material, including Love Crisis, before leaving for a solo path that eventually took him to enormous audiences in East Africa.
The group kept its name. The voice at the front kept changing.
Michael Rose then anchored the group's most celebrated era, fronting Anthem, which won the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album in 1985, before he too departed for a long solo career. Junior Reid stepped into the role in the mid-1980s, having already made his name as a teenage prodigy for Hugh Mundell and Augustus Pablo, and left his own mark with the enduring anthem "One Blood."
What stayed the same
Through every change, Duckie Simpson remained. The pattern raises a quieter question for the atlas to keep tracing: how much of a reggae group's identity lives in its sound system of collaborators and producers, like King Jammy, rather than in any single voice out front.