Lord Tanamo

Mento beginnings

Joseph Abraham Gordon was born in Kingston on 2 October 1934. He took up music after hearing Cecil Lawes play the rumba box, sang calypsos with Lawes as a teenager and was performing in hotels by the early 1950s. His first records were made for Kingston businessman and sound system operator Stanley Motta, with a band that included Theophilus Beckford and Ernest Ranglin. "Blues Have Got Me Down" (1960), for producer Emil Shallit, was an early hit.

The Skatalites

In the early 1960s Tanamo moved to ska and was a founding member of the Skatalites, singing with the band on "Come Down" and "I'm in the Mood for Ska", a rewrite of the standard "I'm in the Mood for Love" by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields. The 1965 UK issue came out on the Ska Beat label. He also recorded "Night Food Ska" and other sides for Duke Reid and Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and had success with ska versions of Jamaican folk songs such as "Iron Bar" and "Matty Rag".

Rainy Night in Georgia

In 1970 Tanamo recorded a reggae version of Tony Joe White's "Rainy Night in Georgia", issued on Studio One and produced by Dodd, with the Ethiopians' "You'll Want to Come Back" on the B-side of one pressing. It spent seven weeks at No. 1 in Jamaica. He also recorded for Lindon Pottinger and Bunny Lee.

Canada and later years

From the mid-1970s Tanamo lived in Toronto, where he married and ran the Record Nook shop selling Jamaican records. A reissue of "I'm in the Mood for Ska" reached No. 58 on the UK Singles Chart in 1990, his only British hit. He kept performing with the reformed Skatalites into the 2000s, including Glastonbury in 2003, and died in Toronto on 15 April 2016.