Garnet Silk

In Concert Montego Bay

His memorial at Brooks Park in the town was attended by thousands, including posses of teenage girls who wept openly at the news that Reggae's rising star had perished along with his mother Teega, in a fire which engulfed their tiny house. It was a tragedy beyond belief, especially for those who knew Garnet of his deep love for his mother.

His greatest dream was to build his mother a brand new house. But the dream was never realized. Just as Garnet decided to take over the supervision of the building work for a new and larger house on the same site where they lived, tragedy occurred! The bizarre tragedy was as a result of an explosion of a gas cylinder which was pierced by a bullet, accidentally discharged from a gun that Garnet and another friend had been tampering with in the house. At this time Garnet Silk was recognized as the shining light of a new generation of reggae vocalists posed to make his mark as an international star with his personalized style of delivery and his melodious Roots and Culture lyrics.

Born Garnet Smith in the Brumalia district of Mandeville in the parish of Manchester, in the cool mountains of central Jamaica, Garnet and his family soon moved to the nearby district of Hatfield where he attended Hatfield Junior Secondary School. It was while at school that Garnet developed his love for music and started hanging out at the various Sound System dances in his local community. His first real involvement with a Sound System was as a DJ with the local Girls Soul Disco, playing at parties and at school fetes.

It was about this time, during the summer of 1977 that he met Delroy 'Callo' Collins, and during the next seventeen years they would go on to share many personal and musical experiences together.

As 'Callo' recalled, "my first meeting with Garnet was when he was only eleven years old and I was approaching my fourteenth birthday. We didn't know it then, but Bimbo and I were about to embark on a journey of a lifetime".

At the time young Callo was busy learning the trades of the entertainment business, helping to run his father's nightclub TUDOR HEIGHTS, as well as his other business interests which included a fairly lucrative bakery operation. Young Callo naturally grew very interested in the entertainment side of the business and spent a lot of time at the club helping to promote the venue and getting first hand experience of how the music business worked.

During this time, the popular SOUL TO SOUL Disco which had a large following in the community was playing at the club, and Callo met Garnet through Teddy, owner of the Girls Soul Disco. Teddy wanted his young DJ (known then as Bimbo) to have a try out on a bigger Sound System and subsequently brought him to the club to audition on the Soul to Soul set.

Young Callo was there to witness the event. He recalls "they had to place three beer crates to make a platform for him just to reach the console, but the diminutive Bimbo proceeded to rock the club to its foundations with his performance". The performance made a big impression on young Callo who was just starting to dabble with music production, making jingles and dub plates for Sound Systems, and experimenting with song writing, but it was about a year later before Callo and Garnet met again.

This time young Garnet resurfaced as the resident DJ at Pepe' Hideout which was situated across the road from Tudor Heights. Many nights young Callo would stay over at his father's place and listen to young Garnet 'nicing up the place on the microphone' and often he would go over to the club to see him perform. "You could tell that he had a little vibe going for him even then, and all the youths in the area used to rate him highly. He had a charisma that everybody seemed attracted to".

When John Pepe, the owner of Pepe's Hide Out, decided that he wanted to produce a dub plate with Garnet to promote the club, it was Callo to whom he turned for assistance. Callo immediately linked up with legendary producer King Tubby who had introduced him to record production and taught him about the skills of the studio. Callo regarded Tubby as a mentor, and arranged a visit to his studio in Kingston with Garnet. It was Garnet's first visit to a recording studio. Garnet also teamed up with STEREOPHONIC DISCO which boasted the legendary General Echo among its crew members, and about that time in 1980 there was a real 'buzz' developing in the local community about Garnet. The town of Mandeville was experiencing a musical explosion which gravitated around Callo's own EVERSONIC MUSIC DISCO on which Garnet often dee jayed at local sessions. When Callo started to set up his own little home demo studio, garnet was deejaying for DESTINY SOUND SYSTEM which also boasted other young DJs like Chakademus, Culture Knox, Tony Rebel, Co-Pilot (later to be known as Shabba Ranks) plus singer Everton Blender. Eventually Callo linked up with the Destiny crew and they formed the Rhythm Track Crew. Under the stewardship of young Callo, they started to seriously dabble with recording, and they ended up recording a couple of songs at Harry J's studios, but nothing really happened until about 1983 when they started to make regular visits to the Music Mountain studio where they linked up with the progressive musical brothers Danny Brownie (main Street Records) and Cleveland brownie (of Steelie & Cleevie fame). Little did they know it then, but for the crew from Mandeville, this was a very important stage in their development as future stars, as it exposed them to the studio atmosphere and gave them valuable insight into studio techniques which they would later incorporate into their repertoire as their careers developed as international artistes.

Around 1983, Callo created the 'Crackerjack' rhythm at his home studio with Tony Roach and Ricky Myrie. It was eventually voiced by Garnet dee jaying a song titled 'Problem Everywhere'. The rhythm was then re-recorded at Music Mountain studios, where Tony Rebel also recorded a song on the rhythm track. Around the same time they also recorded 'Blend Them' with Everton Blender, and 'King Moses' with Frankie Wilmott, another song which would later be covered by Garnet.

Like most other new ventures into the music recording business, the early days were frustrating for the crew from Manchester as they battled to get their air play for their recordings, but eventually they made the breakthrough when radio host Winston 'the Cool One' Williams granted them the favour of playing their records on his popular radio show. In no time Garnet and other members of the crew were being booked for stage shows in Mandeville and the surrounding communities.

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