Reggaeobit: Sugar Minott

The death has been announced of Sugar Minott, one of the earliest reggae acts to crossover.

Born - where else? - in Kingston, Jamaica, Lincoln Barrington Minott got involved with reggae at an early age, selecting for the Sound of Silence Keystone group before he was a teenager. He established his own sound system, Gathering Of Youth, shortly afterwards.

Sugar Minott got a further toehold in the scene as a member of the African Brothers. The band worked with names whose position in reggae history border on the religious - Coxsone Dodd, Rupie Edwards and Ronny Burke amongst them.

After he left the trio, he turned his start into a strong solo following. He spent time with Studio One, helping re-establish the label after it had seen many of its first wave depart to other outfits. Fabulously successful at home, Minott even managed a number four hit in the UK with Good Thing Going in 1981.

His Black Roots label, and Youthman production outfit brought on the next generation of Jamaican talent, while he continued to tour in his own right. He was about to release a new album in the next couple of weeks.

Sugar Minott was 54; the cause of his death has not been made public, but he had cancelled Canadian dates following chest pains earlier this year.

Gordon in the morning: Snow day

With the country driving into a snow bank and deciding to stay home - except for moaning representatives of small business organisations, who seemed to have no problem getting to TV studios to whine that everyone was having fun instead of turning up to be laid off - would Gordon be able to cope? Or would there just be a skeleton gossip service running for Sun readers?

Today's lead suggests the latter:

HERE’S X Factor supremo SIMON COWELL in never-seen-before holiday snaps looking like dancefloor king JOHN TRAVOLTA.

Yes, today's Bizarre is as empty as the bread counter in the corner shop, as Gordon tries to make a story out of someone who found some old photos of Simon Cowell.

Melissa Zimmelstern was on holiday in the same resort and is pictured with Simon. She found the snaps while rooting around in a box full of old holiday albums in her loft.

That noise? Oh, that's the wailing of Fiona Bruce, distraught at the loss of a chance of such a valuable artifact from the Antiques Roadshow.

Luckily, of course, there is an full overseas staff of celebrities able to keep things churning over. If nobody turns up to do anything interesting in the UK, there's always Amy Winehouse to fall back on:

Amy's off to isle of druggies

Anglesey?

RECOVERING junkie AMY WINEHOUSE is planning a change of scenery — by moving to druggie paradise Jamaica.

No, I'm sure The Sun checked that that is the official tourism slogan the country is using right now.

God, Jamaica sounds terrible:

The Rehab singer, 25, wants to record her hugely-delayed third album on the Caribbean island where illegal drugs are known to be widely available.
[...]
The label is “fully aware” Jamaica is awash with drugs like crack cocaine and cannabis.

What a horrible sounding place - awash with drugs, you say. It's slightly odd, then, that last summer the Sun's travel column was recommending the island as a place for a jolly holiday, isn't it?

Songwriterobit: Vincent Ford

The death has been announced of Vincent Ford, reggae songwriter.

Ford is credited with writing No Woman, No Cry, although some claim that the tune was written by Bob Marley with the credit gifted to Ford. Whatever the truth of the creation, the money raised by the song did a lot of good - Ford used the regular royalty cheques to keep a soup kitchen in Trenchtown, Kingston, afloat.

Ford was 68; he died of complications related to his diabetes.

Guyana a little more like Brighton now

The Jamaican dance hall artist Bounty Killer has been banned from Guyana. Although known for promoting the killing of gay men, he'd been doing that before he played Georgetown; it was more the gunfire which broke out during his set that made the government decide they could do without him. Movado has also been banned, presumably because they had the book out anyway.

Jamaican Broadcasting Company loses Tosh and more

If you're read the introduction to Clive James' TV criticism book Visions Before Midnight, you'll be familiar with his argument that the archive programmes wiped by a BBC keen to reuse tape was merely a physical manifestation of the act of forgetting which humanity needs to do to stay sane. Perhaps that's the best spirit to approach the discovery that "a massive number" of rare recordings have vanished from the Jamaican Broadcasting Company's collection.

The missing stuff dates from the 70s, and includes rare recordings of Peter Tosh and Bob Marley, along with footage of Castro's 1977 visit to the island and god knows what else.