The singer Jimmy James first arrived in London in 1964 as frontman of the Vagabonds, a Jamaican dance band booked to perform at West Indian clubs across Britain for six months. However, the band’s dynamic performances – they mixed ska and calypso with R&B and big band standards – quickly gained them a sizeable British fanbase, a residency at the Marquee Club in Soho, a recording contract, and support slots with the Who and the Rolling Stones. James, who has died aged 83, remained in the UK for the rest of his life, a popular singer and entertainer who would enjoy chart success and continue performing across the country until 2022, when ill health forced him to retire.
James had had two solo hits in Jamaica before coming to the UK. He had approached the producer Lyndon Pottinger with his own composition, Bewildered and Blue (1961), in the hope of finding someone to record the song. Instead, he was asked to sing it. “The next thing I know, I hear it play on the radio,” said James.
He continued to write and record his songs, working with the producers Sir Dee and Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd alongside Pottinger. James’s plaintive mix of R&B and pop influences marked him as a rising talent in the newly independent nation’s fledgling music industry, and it was on Pottinger’s Gaydisc Records that his 1962 recording Come to Me Softly became a Jamaican hit – it later reached No 44 in the US R&B charts when a re-recorded version was issued there.
He was soon recruited by the Vagabonds, a big band who played local dances and tourist hotels and needed a lead singer. They recorded an album, The Fabulous Vagabonds, for Chris Blackwell’s Island Records in 1964, which led to the UK tour. Only days after arriving in London, they were invited to appear on the BBC TV show Tonight. They then cut a largely instrumental album for Decca called Ska-Time (1964, as Jamaica’s Own Vagabonds). Pete Meaden, a well-known presence on London’s mod scene who had discovered and managed the Who, was an early supporter, and became the Vagabonds’ manager.
He changed the band’s name to Jimmy James and the Vagabonds, and secured them support slots with the Who (who would offer the band continued support across the next few years), the Rolling Stones and Steampacket, and Harold Pendleton, manager of the Marquee, offered them a Monday night residency. Their dynamic mix of soul and ska gained a loyal mod following, which grew after the band were signed to Pye Records and Meaden produced their 1966 album The New Religion (Meaden had championed mod as “a new religion”).
Strong as the album was, it was not a commercial success, and the band instead focused on live performances, releasing a Live at the Marquee Club recording in late 1966. In 1968, their persistence paid off when they scored their first UK Top 40 chart placing with a rocksteady version of Neil Diamond’s Red Red Wine (UB40’s later cover, employing a similar arrangement, went to No 1 in the UK and the US in the 80s).
The Vagabonds split in 1970 with the band’s bassist, Phil Chen, and MC, Count Prince Miller, both going on to have successful music and acting careers, while James hired a new British band as the Vagabonds.
He had two UK hits in 1976, with I’ll Go Where Your Music Takes Me (No 23) and Now Is the Time (No 5), but James’s greatest impact remained in his live performances, where he would dance up a storm while singing in his mellifluous tenor voice. Across the decades he regularly headlined at soul and 60s music festivals, a consummate entertainer.
Born Michael James (but known as Jimmy), in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, he did not initially aim to be a musician. Instead, after finishing school, he moved to Kingston and got a job working in the government tax office, writing songs in his spare time.
Speaking to the Guardian last year, he noted of the Windrush generation: “We brought a hell of a lot: music, fashion, food. Even now the kids try and speak like Jamaicans. At the same time, we had to put up with discrimination: ‘No Irish, no blacks, no dogs’. How can people be so ignorant?”
James felt his generation of musicians had been ignored by the Mobo (music of black origin) awards, so was happy to see BGO Records reissue four Jimmy James and the Vagabonds 60s-era albums on a double CD package in 2020, and his music feature in the British Library exhibition Beyond the Bassline: 500 Years of Black British Music.
He is survived by his wife, Paula (nee Mercurios-Taylor), five sons and two daughters.
• Jimmy (Michael) James, singer and songwriter, born 13 September 1940; died 14 May 2024
