ReggaeCollector.com - Johnny Osbourne's Profile

Reggae Music Rare Collector's & Vintage Record Online Store

>> Advanced Search

Top→Feature Archives→Artist Hall of Fame→Johnny Osbourne

Featured Artist

Artist Hall of Fame

Johnny OsbourneText by Harry Hawks

A consummate, professional vocalist who demonstrated, time and time again, that there was room for a versatile veteran amongst the brash, younger rising stars of the dance hall.

Johnny Osbourne

Real Name	Errol Osbourne
Born	1948
Place of Birth	Jones Town Jamaica
Related Artist(s)	Sugar Minott

Born 1948 Errol 'Johnny' Osbourne began his singing career in his early twenties for Winston 'Techniques' Riley as a member of The Wild Cats. 1969 proved to be a very eventful year for young Johnny Osbourne. That year he recorded his debut record, the wonderful 'All I Have Is Love' credited to Johnny Osbourne & The Wild Cats and released on the Coxsone label, for Mr Dodd(CS Dodd) at Studio One. Winston and Buster Riley then established their own company and Johnny returned to record for the brothers' new Techniques Records label. 'Come Back Darling', credited to Johnny Osbourne & The Sensations, proved to be one of their earliest and biggest hits. Johnny & The Sensations continued to record for Techniques and the 'Come Back Darling' album, featuring a selection of Johnny Osbourne's vocals alongside instrumental tracks from Johnny Organ, was released later that year. The story goes that Johnny apparently left Kingston, Jamaica and flew to Toronto, Canada on the day that work on the album was finished.

Johnny immersed himself in Toronto's musical scene and continued to develop his vocal expertise with a number of soul and reggae bands before joining The Ishan People. He recorded two albums as lead vocalist with the group but, when they disbanded in 1979, Johnny returned home where he recorded three very popular singles at Studio One: 'Jealousy, Hatred, Heartache & Pain', 'Forgive Them' and the beautiful 'Love Is Here To Stay' built around The Bassies' 'River Jordan'. All were big hits and Johnny carried on recording down on Brentford Road. His 'Truths & Rights' album, released the following year, was immediately acknowledged as a certified classic and, alongside Sugar Minott's 'Live Loving' and Freddie McGregor's 'Bobby Bobylon', heralded the renaissance of Studio One. All three long players emphasised the importance and relevance of the rhythms originated at Brentford Road in the sixties which now became the foundations of the dance hall style in the eighties. The key track on 'Truths & Rights', 'Sing Jay/Jah Stylee' grafted on to Alexander Henry's 'Please Be True' rhythm, not only introduced a brand new style but named it too and 'Sing Jay' became the accepted term for Jamaican singers performing like deejays.

Eleven years after making his first record Johnny Osbourne was now elevated to the first division of Jamaican singers and he began to make up for a decade away from Kingston's recording studios. He recorded two excellent albums in rapid succession for Henry ‘Junjo’ Lawes, 'Fally Lover' and 'Never Stop Fighting', which showcased a superb blend of love and reality songs backed by The Roots Radics. He also worked with Linval Thompson on 'Back Off' and 'Trying To Turn Me On' with Papa Tullo supplying the deejay counteraction which were both big twelve inch hits before settling down to work with Lloyd 'Prince Jammy' James. Jammy would soon be promoted to 'King Jammy' in recognition of his total dominance of the music of the eighties and Johnny Osbourne was one of the most consistent hit makers of Jammy's extensive stable of vocalists.

Their first album together, 'Folly Ranking', was a critique of the role of the gun in Kingston's ghettos and berated those who believed in the fallacy that violence offered any solutions; the autobiographical 'Trenchtown School' was an affirmation of where the artists and musicians who made reggae music were coming from. Life in the ghettos of Trenchtown was never easy and the lot of the sufferer has always been alleviated by the joys of music... "forget your troubles and dance" . 'Water Pumping', a huge hit adapted from Hopeton Lewis' seminal rock steady outing 'Take It Easy', was a celebration of yet another of Kingston's innumerable dance trends.

It has been argued that the direction now taken by the music, and the lyrics in particular, were ephemeral and avoided facing up to the realities of the Jamaican situation. But as the best known proponent of 'rebel' music pointed out music can be entertaining as well as instructive:

"Reggae doesn't have to be political, or angry. It can be about anything. Most things are worth making music about." Bob Marley

Jammys production of Wayne Smith's 'Under Me Sleng Teng' in 1985 ushered in the 'digital' era and computer driven rhythms became the next crucial phase in reggae music's development. Johnny's 'Buddy Bye' was one of the most popular of the countless cuts of the 'Sleng Teng' rhythm which he followed up with a series of releases praising King Jammy's Super Power sound system including 'In The Area' and 'Dub Plate Playing'. 'No Sound Like We' could be read as recommending both Jammy's sound system and the revolutionary sound of Jammy's digital recordings.

Equally confident and assured on 'profound' and 'superficial' subject matter Johnny Osbourne has retained his pre-eminent position ever since and his popularity, with both the record buying public and the critics, has never faltered. After a long absence from the local stage he made a triumphant return in January 2012 for the Rebel Salute in St. Elizabeth where he told Cecelia Campbell-Livingston that if an artist has not "left something that can tell their story on the road of time. If you retire, and no one can't recall a song you did, it's a wasted career." No-one could ever accuse Johnny Osbourne of this...

Date Added: May 30, 2018