Dennis Brown

Dennis Emmanuel Brown (1 February 1957 - 1 July 1999) was the singer Bob Marley named as his own favourite, and whom Marley called the Crown Prince of Reggae — a title that stuck because nobody seriously disputed it. He began recording for Coxsone Dodd at Studio One in 1969, aged twelve, and his first single "No Man Is an Island" built airplay steadily for almost a year before it became a hit across Jamaica, which is an unusual way for a career to start: not an explosion but a slow, undeniable accumulation.

That became the pattern. He recorded with Winston "Niney" Holness, who produced his breakthrough, then through his most prolific years with Joe Gibbs, and later with Gussie Clarke in the dancehall era, including the celebrated pairings with Gregory Isaacs. In the mid-1970s he founded his own label, DEB Music, and used it to release other singers — Junior Delgado and Gregory Isaacs among them — which puts him in the small group of Jamaican artists who became producers of other people's records rather than only of their own.

"Money in My Pocket" reached number 14 in Britain in 1979 and Love Has Found Its Way charted there in 1982; Visions of Dennis Brown (1977) and "Wolf and Leopard" (1976) remain the records people reach for first. He died in Kingston at 42, of a collapsed lung following pneumonia contracted on tour in Brazil, and was posthumously made a Commander of the Order of Distinction in 2011.