Reggae legend Junior Murvin, whose most famous hit, Police and Thieves, crashed the British national chart in 1980, died on Monday, December 2 at the Port Antonio Hospital in Portland, Jamaica. He was 67 years old.
His son, Kevin Smith, told the Jamaica Observer that his father was admitted to hospital last Thursday to seek treatment for diabetes and hypertension. There will be a post mortem to determine the cause of death, he said.
Born Murvin Smith in Port Antonio, Junior started his career there in the mid-1960s as a singer on the hotel scene before making his way to Kingston. There he recorded for various producers, including Derrick Harriott and Sonia Pottinger.
Police And Thieves was produced by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at Perry’s Black Ark studio in Washington Gardens, St Andrew. The song was initially a hit in Jamaica, but really took off in Britain where it also found an audience with the punk movement. The following year Island Records released an album of the same name.
The tune was one of the themes of the 1977 Notting Hill Carnival, which famously ended in violence.
A lengthier tribute to Junior will appear later.
