Apparently this 2020 still without giving up. A difficult year in every way that, further, has brought Zion to great Reggae legends. Albert Griffiths passed away a few days ago, leader of the Reggae band The Gladiators, considered a pioneer of the genre, who died of Parkinson's 74 years in the town of Aberdeen, St. Elizabeth, Jamaica.
More than 10 years the artist was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, since then he got off the planes and stopped traveling with The Gladiators, reggae band that was very popular on the island during the seventies.
“The Gladiators were one of the first reggae groups to enter the international global space and Albert was breaking down language barriers and defending the reggae music of the decade of 1970. Gave us one of Jamaica's most important number one songs, ‘Hello Carol’. He was a great person, He played bass but was known as a brilliant rhythm guitarist who played on many hit songs at Studio One.”, dijo Cabel Stephenson, who led the Gladiators between 1994 Y 2004, according to the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper.
Born in St. Elizabeth the 1 of January of 1946, Griffiths moved to Kingston 14 years later, according to his biography. He accepted a job as a bricklayer after a series of unsuccessful recording auditions. Among his co-workers was Ethiopian leader Leonard Dillon, and the two singers convinced their employer Leebert Robinson to finance a recording session at the famous Studio One, and the resulting sessions resulted in Griffiths' debut ‘You Are the Girl’, released as the flip side of the hit album 1966 of the Ethiopians “Train to Skaville”.
Later, Griffiths recruited his childhood friends, David Webber and Errol Grandison, to form the original vocal group Gladiators. The group's name was supposedly suggested by a bus passenger during the time of their first recordings..
The first great success of the group was with the single ‘Hello Carol’ in 1968, for producer Coxsone Dodd, who topped the Jamaican music charts. Shortly after, in 1969, Webber suffered an illness and was replaced by Clinton Fearon, one of Griffiths protégés. In the same way, Grandison left the group in 1973 due to family commitments and was replaced by Dallimore Sutherland.
According to his biography, early in the decade 1970 the Gladiators recorded numerous albums for various producers, but it was his Studio One recordings like "Bongo Red", “Jah Jah Go Before Us”, "Mr Baldwin" and "Roots Natty" which became his biggest hits. This success attracted the attention of Virgin Records, based in Great Britain, which gave the group their first major recording contract on 1976. Her debut full-length album for Virgin was "Trenchtown Mix Up.", followed by "Proverbial Reggae" (1978) with songs like 'Hearsay', ‘Jah Works’, ‘Dreadlocks the Time is Now’, ‘Mix Up’, ‘Music Makers from Jamaica ‘y’ Soul Rebel ‘, a song written by The Wailers.
The Gladiators released eleven studio albums in the 1980s. They signed with Nighthawk Records, based in the US. UU., and released "Symbol of Reality" in late 1982, followed by "Serious Thing" on 1984. One year later, they would change stamps again, this time with Heartbeat Records with whom they would release albums during the second half of the decade. In 1987, Fearon left the group after eighteen years, but Griffiths and Sutherland continued to release albums on various labels ever since..
With the emergence of dancehall in the nineties, the Gladiators only released three studio albums. In 2005, sacaron “Fathers and Sons”, which has been considered as the farewell of Albert Griffiths who left the band due to health problems. His sons Alan and Anthony joined the group. In june 2013, The group announced that their next album would be a collaboration with deejay Droop Lion., nephew of the original member of Gladiators, David webber, interpreting new versions of some of the songs. In 2019 the album “Roots Legacy” came out with Utopia Studios.
Source: Digital media / RC team
