Childhood
Blackwell was born in Westminster, London. Blackwell's father, Joseph, who was Irish, was related to the founder of Crosse & Blackwell, purveyors of jarred foods and relishes, and had some residual wealth. He became a Major in the Jamaican Regiment.
Blackwell's mother, the former Blanche Lindo, was born in Costa Rica, and was a Sephardic Jew from a Jamaican family. She belonged to a powerful family who made their fortune in sugar and Appleton rum toward the end of slavery. They are named as one of the 21 families who controlled Jamaica in the 20th century. Blackwell's parents divorced when he was twelve. Blanche was considered the love of Ian Fleming's later life, becoming the James Bond author's muse and the inspiration for the character Pussy Galore in Goldfinger. She owned several thousand acres of land near Oracabessa, Jamaica, and sold properties to both Fleming and Noël Coward. Due to her heritage, Blanche was viewed as a white Jamaican.
Blackwell spent his childhood in Jamaica, and was sent to Britain to continue his education at Harrow. Deciding not to attend university, he returned to Jamaica to become ADC to the Governor of Jamaica Sir Hugh Foot. After Foot was transferred to Cyprus, Blackwell left King's House to pursue a career in real estate and other businesses, including managing jukeboxes up and down the country, which brought him into contact with the Jamaican music community.
In 1958, Blackwell was sailing off Helshire Beach when his boat ran aground on a coral reef. The twenty one-year-old swam to the coast and attempted to find help along the shore in searing temperatures. Collapsing on the beach, Blackwell was rescued by Rasta fishermen who tended his wounds and restored him back to health with traditional Ital food. The experience gave Blackwell a spiritual introduction to Rastafarianism, and was a key to his connection to the culture and its music.
Read more about this topic: Chris Blackwell
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“I long for scenes where man has never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator God And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below, above, the vaulted sky.”
—John Clare (1793–1864)
“Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth
Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see
In simple childhood something of the base
On which thy greatness stands; but this I feel,
That from thyself it comes, that thou must give,
Else never canst receive. The days gone by
Return upon me almost from the dawn
Of life: the hiding-places of man’s power
Open; I would approach them, but they close.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)