Billy Boyo Extra Credit

The world of remote working, social distance and closed schools has been pretty disorienting. Hard to tell some days how much I've accomplished, no matter how hard we work. That said, knowing that I managed to make at least one of you into a new Billy Boyo fan makes me 100% confident that this has been a productive week in my life. So, by request, one last visit to our high school MC.

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Billy Boyo ‎– Zim Zim
Silver Kamel Audio ‎– BB5640
CD, Album, US, 2002

Billy Boyo's career seems to have disappeared almost as swiftly as he had come on the scene. By about 1985 he pretty much disappeared from recording. Another handful of singles trickled out over the years, but I believe his exit from music went along with leaving Jamaica for New York. Years later, there were rumors that he had been shot and killed, but they appeared to be untrue when news circulated in late 2000 that Billy Boyo (at age 30?) had just died from brain cancer.

A full album had been recorded in the UK in 1983, but never released. The LP, Zim Zim, finally surfaced in 2003 on the Silver Kamel label, giving us one last dance with Billy Boyo in the area.

1 Jamaica Nice
2 Dub Freeze
3 Zim Zim
4 Stagolee Stylee
5 Dreadlocks Party
6 Dread Skank
7 Every Mockell Tell
8 Got To Say It
9 Iron Woman
10 Vote For Me
11 I Like Your Something
12 B.B.'s Posse

I hope this is enjoyed by anyone I managed to hook anyone with those singles last week. And if you still haven't gotten your Billy Boyo fix and liked the stories and clips about the 1980s dancehall scene... There's a rare book by a couple Finnish dudes in the early 80s who spent a bunch of time in JA interviewing the deejays and other characters (including Billy) around the Volcano sound system.

Wouldn't it be great if we knew someone nerdy enough to have a PDF copy around that you could download?