BOB ANDY REMEMBERED!

By Howard Campbell—

Reggae’s original thinker, Bob Andy sang and wrote some of the genre’s great songs at a time when the Jamaican artist was big into covering American music.
Andy died March 27 in Kingston, Jamaica’s capital. He succumbed to cancer at age 75.
Copeland Forbes, who knew Andy since the early 1960’s, said while he was an outstanding singer/songwriter, Andy’s eccentricities were well-known.
“I remember him touring Japan in 1994 with the 809 Band and he was driving them crazy. At the end of the tour he got them together and told them they were the greatest band,” Forbes recalled. “He said ‘any band that can put up with me for three weeks must be great’.”

Andy was a member of The Paragons when Forbes first met him. He went solo in the mid-1960’s at Studio One and was replaced in that trio by John Holt.
At Studio One, Andy excelled as a singer/songwriter. Songs like Unchained, Too Experienced, My Time and I’ve Got to go Back Home, made him a star; he also wrote and recorded hit songs with his partner Marcia Griffiths, such as Really Together.

Andy wrote all of Griffiths’ initial hits including Feel Like Jumping, Mark my Words and Melody Life. They had a massive hit in the United Kingdom in 1970 with Young, Gifted And Black, originally done by Nina Simone.
In the 1970s, Andy was still on the charts with socially-conscious songs like Fire Burning and Check it Out. He expressed his mellow side with ballads such as You’re Still my Honey and tried his hand at acting with a lead role in the 1978 movie, Children of Babylon.

Forbes noted that Andy was also ahead of the pack in another area.
“He was very educated when it came to things like publishing and settled (legally) with several people who used his music without permission. In that regard, he and B.B. Seaton were ahead of their time,” Forbes said.
In the 1980’s and 1990’s, Bob Andy found a new audience when Barrington Levy covered My Time and Too Experienced; Griffiths covered Fire Burning; and Sanchez and Jack Radix put their spin on Unchained.
He was also a fixture on the growing Jamaican oldies circuit during the 1990’s, performing on shows like Heineken Startime.