Frankie Paul

Paul Blake was born with limited eyesight, later partially restored following an operation performed aboard a hospital ship. He attended a Salvation Army school for blind children in Kingston, where he began singing, and it was there that an encounter with a visiting Stevie Wonder — who was impressed by the young Blake's performance — reportedly encouraged him to pursue music. He took the stage name Frankie Paul in a nod to that inspiration.

He made his first recording, "African Princess," in 1980 at age fifteen, and by the early 1980s had become one of the defining voices of dancehall's first wave. His breakthrough hit "Worries in the Dance," produced by Henry "Junjo" Lawes, aligned him with the sound-system-driven dancehall style then displacing roots reggae, and he went on to release an extraordinarily large catalogue of albums and singles across the decade and beyond.

Like Wonder, Paul was also a skilled multi-instrumentalist, and his tremendous vocal range and versatility across styles — from sweet lovers rock to hard dancehall chatting — made him one of the most in-demand session and recording vocalists in Jamaican music for over three decades.

In his later years he suffered from diabetes and kidney disease requiring dialysis. He died on May 18, 2017, at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston at age 51, prompting an outpouring of tributes across the Jamaican music industry for an artist widely regarded as one of the greatest vocalists dancehall produced.