Biography
Holness formed The Soulites in the early 1970s and recorded his first solo single in the early 1980s for producer Sugar Minott. He worked on the Zodiac sound system and recorded further singles, working with George Phang before moving on to King Jammy in 1985, with whom he had his breakthrough success with "Hog inna Minty", a Jamaican folk song. Nitty Gritty was the first to record the song and was an instant success. He enjoyed further successful singles produced by Jammy, and his debut album, Turbo Charged was released in 1986, as was the split album with King Kong, Musical Confrontation. He moved to live in London before relocating to New York City, where he continued to record but less frequently. Further albums followed with General Penitentiary (1987), Nitty Gritty (1988), and Jah in the Family (1989).
On 24 June 1991, he was shot dead in front of Super Power Record Shop in Brooklyn, New York at the age of 34, for which deejay Super Cat was initially suspected yet later cleared.
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“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
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“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
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