Dennis Brown
In 1979, the Montreux Jazz Festival staged its first Reggae Night, bringing reggae from underground London and Jamaica to a major European stage. The lineup said it all: Steel Pulse, Dennis Brown, and Peter Tosh.
Just 22, Dennis Brown stood alongside Gregory Isaacs and Ken Boothe as one of reggae’s top lover singers, already a major figure in Jamaica with several hit albums, and celebrated as the Crown Prince of Reggae. He performed with an 11-piece band led by guitarist Earl “Chinna” Smith, with Lloyd Parks on bass and Dean Fraser on saxophone.
A few years later, in 1986, Dennis Brown returned to Switzerland for the Reggae Sunsplash Festival in Winterthur, still as commanding as ever.
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(1) In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Dennis Brown 67th among the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
