Tommy Clarke ADD
Trevor Clarke aka Tommy Clarke is a Jamaican singer born December 25th 1954 in Kingston 12. He put his first step in the music alongside Lloyd Parks when he was in a group name The Termites. At his young age, Tommy was living in Tower Hill and Lloyd ask him to hold his guitar so that he could open his gate. From there he got the inspiration to do music. His elders told him to listen before starting his musical journey. That's what he did by watching his close friend Lynford Manning who was from the group The Abyssinians and the next group named Carlton and The Shoes.
After a while Tommy started to sing and from 1975 he was making the balance during the Abyssinians rehearsal at Bernard Collins home. He trained singing Abyssinians songs and has been invited to make harmonies for them during The Beat Goes On Festival at National Arena and next leg kept at Disco Inferno in Montego Bay.
Later, Tommy was also making harmonies for The Cables. The Cables are a classic Jamaican rocksteady trio who recorded for studio one in the late 1960s.
Then one step forward, Tommy become the lead singer for the Black Culture band from 1981 to 1991. They recorded few hit songs like Reggae Rocking, Jahova and Wicked Babylonian. Black Culture was very famous at that time and the band did the backing for Dennis Brown, Junior Reid, Richie Stephens, Big Youth, Lord Tanamo, Edi Fitzroy and many other legendary artists…
Reggae Rocking has been recorded at 56 Hope Road which is now the place of the Bob Marley Museum. He had many occasion to reason with The King of Reggae and became a good friend of Family Man the famous bass player from The Wailers. Reggae Rocking has been recently repressed on vinyl 45 by TRS Records and Jahova and Wicked Babylonian are a available on CD at King Culture label.
Around 1996 until 2006 tommy was the lead singer of Crucial Subjects reggae band based in George Town Grand Cayman.
Apart from music, he has another talent: he is one of the best carpenter ‐ wood worker from Jamaica. He has many manual skills and is able to build house, bed, stairs or any furniture. A true versatile man!
Even if during most of his past musical career he never received any benefits from the song's he did, Tommy never stopped. He recently made a great foundation Rasta song intitled Holy Mountain inspired from Psalm 87. He was at Youthman Promotion when Sly from Abendigo Records contacted him. Tommy started write the chorus and then verses came naturally. The riddim has been done by Dub Kazman who is amongst the finest Japan dub makers. Dub Kazman also has his own Label entitled Rough Signal Records with many great productions.
Tommy Clarke also recorded Take a Set for Black Board Jungle in 2019 which became popular in Spain. And he also voiced a very good song Wonderful on a Mexican label called Ghetto Foundation. Since 2009, he did few songs for Manwel T which are available at Dubkey Records.
© Written by Sly Abendigo
