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Artist
Clancy Eccles
12+ albums
reggaeskarocksteadyskinhead reggaetrojan
about
Clancy Eccles (9 December 1940, Dean Pen, St. Mary, Jamaica – 30 June 2005, Spanish Town, Jamaica) was a Jamaican ska and reggae singer, songwriter, arranger, promoter, record producer and talent scout. Known mostly for his early reggae works, he brought a political dimension to this music. His house band was known as The Dynamites. Son of a tailor and builder, Clancy Eccles spent his childhood in the countryside of the parish of Saint Mary, where he used to attend regularly church cult and became soon influenced by spiritual singing. In his late teens, he moved to Ocho Rios where he made his first musical steps, performing at night in various shows, with artists like The Blues Busters, Higgs & Wilson or Buster Brown. He moved to Kingston in 1959 where he started his musical career as a singer. He first recorded for Coxsone Dodd, who noticed him at a talent show, and had a Jamaican hit in 1961 with the early-ska tune "Freedom" recorded actually in 1959 but a sound system favorite since then. Talking about the repatriation to Africa, an idea developed by the growing rastafari movement, "Freedom" was one of the first Jamaican songs with socially oriented lyrics. Curiously, it also became the first Jamaican hit to be used on political purposes with Alexander Bustamante, founder of the Jamaican Labour Party and at this time Chief Minister of Jamaica adopting it for his fight against the Federation of the West Indies in 1960. In the years after, Eccles had other successful song
