On the night of Sunday, January 31, 2010, Gregory Isaacs was a nominee for Best Reggae Album at the 52nd Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. The record was Brand New Me, released in 2009 shortly after he finished producing it at his Poor People Recording Studio in St Andrew, and distributed by Tads Records, Howard Campbell reported in the Sunday Gleaner that morning. “I always think I can win yuh nuh, an’ this is a good album. Mi spen’ a lotta time on it,” the 58-year-old said. His one complaint: “It coulda do wid some more airplay.”
The field
The competition was formidable: Sean Paul’s Imperial Blaze, Stephen Marley’s Mind Control – Acoustic, Julian Marley’s Awake and Buju Banton’s Rasta Got Soul. Stephen Marley won, per the Recording Academy. The Gleaner’s Campbell noted the perennial grumble that “persons associated with reggae legend Bob Marley” had won the category an unusual number of times since it began in 1985.
The count
It was Isaacs’s third nomination as a solo artist, after Mr. Cool (39th Awards, 1997) and Private & Confidential (43rd, 2001), and his fourth overall: he had appeared on Reggae Sunsplash ’81: A Tribute to Bob Marley, nominated in 1983 for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording, the Recording Academy’s artist page shows. A fifth, posthumous nomination — Isaacs Meets Isaac, with King Isaac — would follow at the 53rd Awards in 2011. He never won.
The road here
After the Gussie Clarke hits of 1988–89, the 1990s brought a torrent of releases — AllMusic lists more than a dozen albums between 1993 and 1995 alone — for producers including Bobby Digital, Fatis Burrell and RAS Records’ Doctor Dread, plus a spell on the British label Acid Jazz. He opened his own studio and launched the singing career of his son Kevin. Continued drug use cost him teeth, reliability and, by many accounts, some of the supple voice of the 1970s, the Guardian records. Yet he “maintained a loyal fan base, both at home in Jamaica and overseas,” and, as the Gleaner put it, he “continues to tour effectively in Europe and the United States.” The Los Angeles Times reported that by 2009 he said he had brought the habit under control.
Why it matters
The Grammy nomination for a self-produced, independently distributed album, forty-one years after “Another Heartache,” is the last professional milestone of the Cool Ruler’s life. Nine months later he was gone.
Listen and dig deeper
- Play Brand New Me, Mr. Cool, Private & Confidential and Isaacs Meets Isaac in the Listen library.
- Previously: ‘Rumours’ and the dancehall rebirth (1988). Next: Jamaica says goodbye to the Cool Ruler (2010).
Sources: Jamaica Gleaner — “‘Cool Ruler’: Dark horse for the Grammy Awards” (Howard Campbell, Jan 31, 2010); Recording Academy — Best Reggae Album, 52nd Grammy Awards; Recording Academy — Gregory Isaacs, awards and nominations; The Guardian — “Gregory Isaacs obituary” (David Katz, Oct 25, 2010); Los Angeles Times — “Gregory Isaacs dies at 59” (Oct 26, 2010); AllMusic — Gregory Isaacs discography.
Editor’s note: This entry is part of the JamaicansMusic online museum — a career timeline assembled from the archive. It is dated to the era it documents; every claim is drawn from the linked sources.