Dennis Brown - Out Of The Funk (Petko Turner Edit)

Dennis Brown - Out Of The Funk Edit By Petko Turner Dennis Brown
was born on 1 February 1957 at Jubilee Hospital in Kingston,
Jamaica. His father Arthur was a scriptwriter, actor, and
journalist, and he grew up in a large tenement yard between North
Street and King Street in Kingston with his parents, three elder
brothers and a sister, although his mother died in the 1960s. He
began his singing career at the age of nine, while still at junior
school, with an end-of-term concert the first time he performed in
public, although he had been keen on music from an even earlier
age, and as a youngster was a keen fan of American balladeers such
as Brook Benton, Sam Cooke, Frank Sinatra, and Dean Martin. He
cited Nat King Cole as one of his greatest early influences. He
regularly hung around JJ's record store on Orange Street in the
rocksteady era and his relatives and neighbours would often throw
Brown pennies to hear him sing in their yard. Brown's first
professional appearance came at the age of eleven, when he visited
a local club where his brother Basil was performing a comedy
routine, and where he made a guest appearance with the club's
resident group, the Fabulous Falcons (a group that included Cynthia
Richards, David "Scotty" Scott, and Noel Brown). On the strength of
this performance he was asked to join the group as a featured
vocalist. When the group performed at a JLP conference at the
National Arena, Brown sang two songs - Desmond Dekker's "Unity" and
Johnnie Taylor's "Ain't That Loving You" - and after the audience
showered the stage with money, he was able to buy his first suit
with the proceeds.[4] Bandleader Byron Lee performed on the same
bill, and was sufficiently impressed with Brown to book him to
perform on package shows featuring visiting US artists, where he
was billed as the "Boy Wonder". As a young singer Brown was
influenced by older contemporaries such as Delroy Wilson (whom he
later cited as the single greatest influence on his style of
singing), Errol Dunkley, John Holt, Ken Boothe, and Bob Andy.[4]
Brown's first recording was an original song called "Lips of Wine"
for producer Derrick Harriott, but when this was not released, he
recorded for Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's Studio One label, and his
first session yielded the single "No Man is an Island", recorded
when Brown was aged twelve and released in late 1969. The single
received steadily increasing airplay for almost a year before
becoming a huge hit throughout Jamaica. Brown recorded up to a
dozen sessions for Dodd, amounting to around thirty songs, and also
worked as a backing singer on sessions by other artists, including
providing harmonies along with Horace Andy and Larry Marshall on
Alton Ellis's Sunday Coming album. Brown was advised by fellow
Studio One artist Ellis to learn guitar to help with his
songwriting, and after convincing Dodd to buy him an instrument,
was taught the basics by Ellis. These Studio One recordings were
collected on two albums, No Man is an Island and If I Follow my
Heart (the title track penned by Alton Ellis), although Brown had
left Studio One before either was released. He went on to record
for several producers including Lloyd Daley ("Baby Don't Do It" and
"Things in Life"), Prince Buster ("One Day Soon" and "If I Had the
World"), and Phil Pratt ("Black Magic Woman", "Let Love In", and
"What About the Half"), before returning to work with Derrick
Harriott, recording a string of popular singles including
"Silhouettes", "Concentration", "He Can't Spell", and "Musical
Heatwave", with the pick of these tracks collected on the Super
Reggae and Soul Hits album in 1973. Brown also recorded for Vincent
"Randy" Chin ("Cheater"), Dennis Alcapone ("I Was Lonely"), and
Herman Chin Loy ("It's Too Late" and "Song My Mother Used to Sing")
among others, with Brown still at school at this stage of his
career