“I feel good,” Beres Hammond said when the Gleaner’s Yasmine Peru asked how it felt — quoting, perhaps by accident, the title of his own 2008 hit. On Saturday, November 4, 2023, at the last of four graduation ceremonies at The University of the West Indies, Mona, Chancellor Robert Bermudez conferred on Hugh Beresford Hammond the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters (DLitt), The UWI reports. He shared the honours weekend with Ambassador Audrey Marks, the late Lascelles Chin, Rachel Manley and Professor Dale Abel, per the Jamaica Observer.
The speech he didn’t give
He ditched the prepared text and talked to the graduates instead, naming Alton Ellis, Stevie Wonder, Sam Cooke and Otis Redding as the singers who made him. Then, The UWI’s account records, he teased the tent with “Every time I think of saying goodbye …” — the opening of “No Goodbye” — and a line from “Doctor’s Orders” (“I feel a shiver running up my spine”), before the pavilion rose to “Rock Away,” the 2001 song in which he pays tribute to the artists who shaped him. The University Singers had chosen the same song for their own tribute. The university’s citation traced “five decades” from “the funked-up reggae jams of the 1970s fusion band Zap Pow” through “the lush instrumentation of his 1976 album Soul Reggae” to “the spare digital beat of his 1985 dancehall breakthrough, ‘What One Dance Can Do’,” and counted 22 solo albums, 13 of them for VP Records.
Order of Jamaica, 2013
The doctorate crowned a decade of recognition. On the 51st anniversary of Independence, August 6, 2013, the Government appointed Hammond — already a holder of the Order of Distinction — to the Order of Jamaica, the country’s fourth-highest honour, “for his exceptional and dedicated contribution to the Jamaican music industry,” the national honours list records. Governor-General Sir Patrick Allen presented the insignia at King’s House on National Heroes Day, October 21, 2013, the Observer reported. He was one of seven appointed that year.
A second Grammy nomination
Weeks later came his second Grammy nod. One Love, One Life, the two-disc VP set released in November 2012 — one disc for love, one for social issues, AllMusic notes — had topped Billboard’s Reggae Albums chart; it was nominated for Best Reggae Album at the 56th Grammy Awards in January 2014, per the Recording Academy, twelve years after Music Is Life. The archive followed the album on the road: with Marcia Griffiths and Morgan Heritage and on the One Love, One Life tour.
‘Never Ending’
After a near six-year gap, Never Ending arrived on October 12, 2018, with longtime collaborators Willie Lindo, Kirk Bennett and Errol “Flabba” Holt, and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart, AllMusic records. He has kept working since — singles including “Rebel Time” with Sean Paul (2023) and “Let Me Help You” (2024) — and kept headlining, most recently telling a Sumfest crowd in July 2024 that he was “not sure how many more of these conferences” he would have with them.
Why it matters
Order of Jamaica, two Grammy nominations, a Billboard No. 1 and a doctorate: no living lovers rock singer carries more of the nation’s formal regard. The distance from a hotel gig with Zap Pow in 1975 to the Chancellor’s handshake in 2023 is the whole arc of this timeline.
Listen and dig deeper
- Play One Love, One Life and Never Ending in the Listen library. Browse Beres Hammond.
- The timeline from the start: ‘One Step Ahead’ (1976) → ‘What One Dance Can Do’ (1985) → ‘Tempted to Touch’ (1990) → ‘Music Is Life’ (2002).
Sources: Jamaica Gleaner — “It’s Dr Beres Hammond!” (Yasmine Peru, Nov 6, 2023); The UWI Mona — “UWI Graduates listen to the Doctor’s Orders and Rock Away with Beres Hammond”; Jamaica Observer — “Beres Hammond to receive UWI honorary doctorate” (Nov 1, 2023); JIS — National Honours and Awards 2013; Jamaica Observer — “Honours in order” (Aug 6, 2013); Jamaica Observer — “Beres Hammond, an ageless wonder” (Oct 19, 2013); Recording Academy — Beres Hammond, awards and nominations; AllMusic — Beres Hammond biography.
Editor’s note: This entry is part of the JamaicansMusic online museum — a career timeline assembled from the archive. It is dated to the events it documents; every claim is drawn from the linked sources.