Biography
Ringo worked in a Kingston record shop, where he met Welton Irie, the two enjoying a long association since. He worked as an operator on the Soul Express and Rippa-Tone sound systems, before being given the chance to record in the late 1970s, and releasing his first single with "Trouble Never Set Like Rain". His recordings became popular in Jamaica, with slack lyrics proving particularly popular. Two notable examples are "Two Lesbians" and "Push Lady Push". In 1982, he had an international reggae hit with "Dub and Lef", which was followed by further Jamaican hits with tracks such as "Pain a Back", "Nah Fight Over Woman", and "Married for the Opportunity". He also contributed the opening track to the album Superstar Yellowman Has Arrived With Toyan in 1982. He continued to work on sound systems, Lees Unlimited and Ray Symbolic's Hi Fi, the latter touring internationally with Ringo, Squiddly Ranking, and Welton Irie. He contributed to some of the early live dancehall albums in 1983 and 1984. While touring the UK, he recorded a brace of singles for Fashion Records, and recorded with Sugar Minott. He continued to record until the early 1990s, sometimes credited simply as Ringo.
He died in July 2005, after suffering for some time from cocaine addiction.
Read more about this topic: Johnny Ringo (musician)
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)