Biography
read full storyBoris Gardiner (born 13 January 1943, Kingston, Jamaica) is a Jamaican singer, songwriter and bass guitarist.
Gardiner performed on the tourist circuit for much of the 1960s and was a member of Carlos Malcolm & the Afro Caribs and Byron Lee's Dragonaires. In the late 1960s and 1970s he worked extensively as a session musician as a member of the Now Generation, The Upsetters, The Aggrovators, and The Crystallites.
Gardiner as a solo artist had a chart hit with the song "Elizabethan Reggae" in 1970, a version of Ronald Binge's "Elizabethan Serenade". Actually, he nearly did not appear at all. The story about his first hit is that, when it was released in the UK, the first copies were printed with the label incorrectly identifying Byron Lee as the performer. The reality was that he was the instrumental track's record producer. The UK Singles Chart for the first entry, and the subsequent first four weeks of its re-entry into the charts all reprinted this error. However, all charts and discs printed after 28 February 1970, duly gave Boris Gardiner the credit he deserved.
His debut album Reggae Happening was also released in 1970 and (although it did not make the pop chart) "sold respectably for a reggae LP" in the UK, according to music journalist Ian McCann. Although Gardiner continued to be successful in Jamaica, he had no more hits in the UK during that decade.
However, in 1986 he recorded the single, "I Want to Wake Up with You", a surprise UK Number One, which spent two months in the Top Ten. The accompanying album, Everything to Me also included the follow-up hit, "You're Everything to Me" (which just missed out being another Top 10 entry, when it peaked at Number 11). The single "The Meaning of Christmas" was also released later that year.
Later, Gardiner signed to RCA Records.
In 2002, a twenty two track anthology, The Very Best of Boris Gardiner was issued on CD by Music Club.