The Celebrity Link: #1 songs by Jamaicans reaching UK Singles National Chart

The Celebrity Link: #1 songs  by Jamaicans  reaching UK Singles National Chart

The incidence of Jamaican recordings reaching the United Kingdom charts and impacting British culture has become commonplace.
Millie Small’s 1964 remake of Barbie Gaye’s 1957 R&B hit, My Boy Lollipop set the trend when it climbed to No. 2 on the British charts.
It effectively opened the floodgates for a deluge of Jamaican recordings to flow incessantly onto the British charts.
Earlier, others like Laurel Aitken and Dandy Livingstone created an initial impact, with Aitken’s Boogie in My Bones and Little Sheila in 1957 becoming the first Jamaican-made recordings to be distributed in England.

A couple years after Millie Small’s hit, ska legend Prince Buster burst onto the UK music scene with the ultimate rude-boy song, Al capone Guns Don’t Argue, which established his career in Britain.

The year 1967 saw the biggest Jamaica-UK hit of that period, when Desmond Dekker’s 007 (Shanty Town) found its way to the No. 14 slot on the charts.

Dekker, who had ushered in a more conscious form of Jamaican rocksteady, revealed to the outside world, through the recording, the condition of ghetto dwellers and gun-toting hoodlums in a society going through a transition:

Two years later, Dekker and the Aces would return to register Jamaica’s greatest impact on the UK charts and the first Jamaican record to hit the No. 1 spot there — Israelites.

Although few could understand its lyrics, it became a timeless masterpiece, merely on the strength of its intense reggae beat, reaching the top in April 1969.http://www.herald.co.zw/jamaican-music-rules-uk/ 661-467-2407 www.crsradio.com