A stalwart of Jamaica’s music industry, Alton Ellis is dead. Mr. Ellis, who was one of the key contributors to the development of the ska and rock steady era, died Friday night in a London Hospital. Mr. Ellis who was 64 had been battling cancer for several months. Alton Ellis is generally revered as one of the greatest and most soulful singers Jamaica has ever produced. The singer was born in Kingston in 1944, and grew up in the Trench Town area as part of a musically inclined family.

In his early teens, Ellis was one half of the duo “Alton & Eddie” with fellow singer Eddie Perkins. In 1958, after winning a prominent talent show, they recorded the single “Muriel,” for Coxsone Dodd at Studio One, which became a substantial hit. Not long after cutting the follow-up “My Heaven,” Perkins left for the United States, leaving Ellis to establish himself as a solo act in Jamaica. In 1962, Duke Reid took Ellis to his Treasure Isle label where he mined several of his best known hits recording with a backing trio, The Flames which included his brother Leslie Ellis. [...]

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