Gregory Isaacs

Gregory Anthony Isaacs was born on July 15, 1950, in Kingston, Jamaica. He entered the music business in his late teens, co-founding the African Museum record shop and label with Errol Dunkley around 1973.

Through the mid-to-late 1970s Isaacs built a reputation for a smooth, mournful vocal style that earned him the nickname "Cool Ruler," after his own 1978 album of that name, recording prolifically for producers including Lee "Scratch" Perry and becoming a fixture of the UK reggae scene.

Isaacs reached his commercial peak with "Night Nurse" (1982), recorded with the Roots Radics and released on Island Records; the title track became one of reggae's best-known love songs. His career was persistently interrupted by drug-related legal trouble: he was arrested dozens of times, served a 1982 prison term for illegal firearm possession, and became addicted to crack cocaine, an addiction that damaged his teeth and voice.

Despite these struggles, Isaacs continued recording into the 2000s, amassing a catalogue of 500-plus singles. He died on October 25, 2010, at his home in London at age 59, after a year-long battle with lung cancer, remembered as both one of reggae's greatest voices and a stark example of addiction's cost to Jamaican artists.