By the mid-1970s Gregory Isaacs had grown locks, embraced Rastafari and widened his subject matter from the bedroom to the ghetto. At Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Black Ark he cut “Mr Cop” (1976) and “Black Against Black,” a rebuke to self-destructive street violence, the Guardian records. In 1977 he released the self-produced concept album Mr. Isaacs. The following year the international market finally came calling.
Front Line
Virgin Records’ reggae imprint Front Line issued Cool Ruler in 1978 (catalogue FL 1020), with the Jamaican pressing on Isaacs’s own African Museum, per Roots Archives. Produced by Isaacs and mixed by Lancelot “Maxie” McKenzie at Channel One, it carried “Native Woman,” “John Public,” “Party in the Slum,” “Uncle Joe” and “Let’s Dance.” It did not deliver the crossover Virgin hoped for. It did deliver a name: from here on, Gregory Isaacs was the Cool Ruler.
The same year he appeared in Ted Bafaloukos’s Kingston film Rockers, performing “Slavemaster” — a brief scene that became many overseas viewers’ first sight of him.
‘Soon Forward’
The 1979 follow-up Soon Forward (Front Line FL 1044) was recorded at Channel One with Dennis Brown among the backing vocalists, AllMusic notes. Nine of its ten tracks were produced by Isaacs. The tenth — the six-and-a-half-minute title song — was produced by Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, credited on the sleeve as Discogs shows, and stands as one of the earliest records to make use of the pair as producers, according to the Guardian. “Mr Brown” topped the Jamaican chart. “Universal Tribulation,” “Black Liberation Struggle” and “Slave Market” kept the cultural fire burning alongside the love songs.
Why it matters
Two albums for a major label did not make Gregory Isaacs a pop star. They did something more durable: they exported the image and the sound intact, on his own productions, without a producer reshaping him for the export market. The Cool Ruler would carry that leverage into the Island Records deal of 1982.
Listen and dig deeper
- Play Cool Ruler, Soon Forward and Mr. Isaacs in the Listen library. Browse Sly & Robbie and Dennis Brown.
- Previously: African Museum and the first hits (1968–1974).
Sources: The Guardian — “Gregory Isaacs obituary” (David Katz, Oct 25, 2010); Roots Archives — Gregory Isaacs, Cool Ruler (1978); Roots Archives — Gregory Isaacs, Soon Forward (1979); Discogs — Soon Forward, Front Line FL 1044; AllMusic — Soon Forward review; FACT — “12 essential records by Gregory Isaacs” (David Katz, Oct 5, 2016).
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.