In the 1960s, Jackie Opel created a syncopated, cowbell-heavy sound that defined Barbados and created a sensation from St Lucia to New York. A few years later it virtually disappeared – but the time is finally here for a revival

Few artists have ever had the audacity to create a national music genre from scratch. This is what the Barbadian singer Jackie “Manface” Opel set out to do in 1968 – and more or less what he did. Born Dalton Bishop in 1938, Opel escaped a poverty-stricken background in Bridgetown to become celebrated as the greatest singer Barbados had ever produced to that point: a multi-talented entertainer with a multi-octave voice, who sang soul, calypso, gospel, R&B and ska, performed handstands on stage, doubled on sax and wrote hit songs on demand.

Talent-spotted by the Jamaican bandleader Byron Lee, Opel spent most of the 1960s in Jamaica, where he sang with the Skatalites and became a Studio One regular. Bunny Wailer called Opel “the greatest of them all”; Bob Marley cited him as the reason he wanted to sing; others remembered him as the closest thing the Caribbean had to James Brown.

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Source: The Guardian