Gil Bailey

Gil Bailey (11 January 1936 – 13 April 2020), the "Godfather of Caribbean Radio", put Jamaican music on American radio when nobody else would. Born in St Thomas, he moved to London in 1957 at twenty-one and worked as MC at Count Suckle's Cue Club — the sound-system apprenticeship behind the broadcasting career. He migrated to the United States in the late 1960s and began broadcasting on WHBI in 1969, at a point when no one in America was playing Jamaican music on the radio.

Through the 1970s he and his wife Pat co-hosted The Gil Bailey Show on WPAT and WNWK, playing reggae, calypso, soca and gospel to West Indian listeners across the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut area. With Tony Cobb, Jeff Barnes and Ken Williams he gave the music a permanent American presence. He died of complications of COVID-19.