The reggae world, and well beyond, mourns the death of Alton Ellis, one of the founding fathers of Jamaican music and one of its most "soulful" representatives. We knew he was ill, with a cancer of the lymph glands, since the end of last year: it was this morning in London, at the age of 64, that the godfather of rocksteady passed away.
Coming from an artistic background, Alton Neamiah Ellis began his musical career through dance, before cutting his teeth in a duo with Eddy Perkins at Studio One in the late 1950s. Influenced, as one would expect, by American music, vocally he had nothing to envy the heavyweights of R&B and soul.
When ska burst onto the scene in 1962, Alton recorded his first hits such as Dance crasher, in which he took anti-"rude boy" positions that would not change one iota (he even opposed Bob Marley at the time). But it was truly the advent of rocksteady that would give this exceptional singer his true standing. He even gave his name to the style with Get ready, rocksteady, recorded for Duke Reid in 1966. He tripled the stakes with Cry tough and Girl I’ve got a date, his greatest international success. He then returned to "Coxsone" Dodd at Studio One, for whom he recorded I’m just a guy, for example.
Lesser known, his early-1970s works, for Keith Hudson or Lloyd "Matador" Daley, reveal another side of his talent: the romantic singer steps aside to let the committed rasta and pan-Africanist speak.
Finally exiled to London from 1973, where he had enjoyed great popularity since the 1960s, he set up his own label, Alltone, but recorded only sporadically. He nevertheless continued to perform all over the world: only a year ago, he was still treading French stages.