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Ska Icon Dekker Dead at 64
Before there was Bob Marley, there was Desmond Dekker.
The pioneering ska singer credited with introducing the world to the Jamaican music scene died Wednesday after collapsing at his home in Surrey, England from an apparent heart attack, his manager said. He was 64.
Dekker was best known for his 1969 hit, "Israelites," which charted in the top 10 in both Britain and the United States and was the first international hit of the reggae genre.
"Desmond was the first legend, believe it or not," Dekker's manager, Delroy Williams told the BBC. "When he released 'Israelites' nobody had heard of Bob Marley--he paved the way for all of them."
Born Desmond Dacres in Kingston, Jamaica on July 16, 1941, Dekkers started out as a welder before making the transition to music. He scored his first hit in 1963, with "Honor Thy Mother and Father."
Subsequent hits included 1966's ".0.0.7 (Shanty Town)," a song inspired by student riots in Jamaica, which reached number 14 on the U.K. charts and was featured on the soundtrack of the 1972 film, The Harder They Come.
But it was with "Israelites" that Dekker reached the peak of his success. The reggae classic topped the charts in the U.K. and in other countries around the world and reached the top 10 in the United States.
"It's about how hard things were for a lot of people in Jamaica--downtrodden, like the Israelites that led Moses to the Promised Land," Dekker said in the liner notes for the 2005 career retrospective You Can Get It If You Really Want.
"I was really saying, don't give up, things will get better if you just hold out long enough."
By the early '70s, Dekker's star was eclipsed by Marley's meteoric rise to fame, but he continued to record sporadically. He tried to take advantage of the major ska revival of the early '80s to launch a career comback, but did not meet with much success and wound up declaring bankruptcy in 1984.
Even so, Dekker continued to be a concert draw in England, where he settled around 1970, shortly after notching another hit with a cover of Jimmy Cliff's "You Can Get It If You Really Want."
His last performance was May 11 at Leeds University and he was scheduled to perform a string of concerts across Europe this summer, including dates in Ireland, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
"It's just bizarre because of all the reggae artists, he was the one that did seem like he was going to go on forever--he was extremely fit," BBC Radio host Mark Lamarr said Friday.
"I saw him live dozens of times and he couldn't do a bad show. He was always magnificent, and there are very few artists that you can say that about."
Williams, Dekker's manager, expressed sorrow at the sudden passing of the man whom he considered his closest friend.
"He died peacefully but it still hurts. I was his manager and his best friend. I don't think anyone knew how close we were--we go back so far," Williams said.
"I didn't even get the chance to say goodbye properly."
Dekker was divorced and is survived by a son and a daughter. Funeral plans had not yet been made public.
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