Headley Bennett

Felix Headley Bennett OD (29 May 1931 – 21 August 2016), also known as Deadly Headley, was a prolific Jamaican saxophonist who performed on hundreds, possibly thousands, of recordings since the 1950s.

Biography

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Bennett attended the Alpha Boys School from the age of five, where he learned to play the saxophone. He left Alpha aged fifteen. Since the 1950s, Bennett has worked as a session musician in Jamaica, playing in the Studio One house band as well as in Lynn Taitt's band The Jets, The Mighty Vikings, and in The Revolutionaries.

In 1962, as a member of The Sheiks, he performed at Palisadoes Airport to greet Princess Margaret on her visit to the island to mark Jamaica's independence.

In the ska era of the late 1950s and 1960s, Headley Bennett played on many recordings for a variety of studios including Bob Marley's first recording, "Judge Not", for Leslie Kong, and Derrick & Patsy Todd's "Housewives Choice". Headley also played on The Wailers' Dancing Shoes, Delroy Wilson's Dancing Mood and Sound Dimension's Full Up, later versioned by Freddie McGregor as Africa Here I Come.

Prince Buster claimed Bennett's solo in Derrick Morgan's song "Forward March...

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