Club Johns

Joseph Vere Everette Johns (born November 28, 1893 in Mandeville , † September 10, 1966 in Kingston ) was a Jamaican journalist , radio presenter, organizer and stage actor. With his talent show on Radio Jamaica RJR 94 FM, he helped many Jamaican musicians start their careers as musicians and was considered the " impresario " of Jamaican music.

Life

Johns was born the son of Rev. Matthew Johns and his wife Lillian, nee Hendricks. His father ran the Manchester Middle School in Mandeville, now Manchester High School, where Vere Johns was trained.

From 1912 Johns worked in the Kingston Post Office. After the outbreak of the First World War he went to England and served from 1915 to the end of the war as a member of the South Lancashire Regiment and the 1st Battalion of the British West India Regiment in the Middle East, Italy and France. His first wife was Doris Johns. In 1919 he returned to his home country and worked there in the statistics department of the Collector General's Office. He tried his hand at various fields on the side, became a Jamaican master of lecturing in 1926, played soccer and was captain and adjutant of the Church Lads 'and Church Girls' Brigade from 1921 to 1928. From 1929 he was in the United States , performing at the theater classic roles, wrote as a columnist for several well-known newspapers, worked for radio stations and was the first African-American reporter in Harlem . In the United States he married the actress Lillian Margaret May for the second time.

In 1939 he returned to his home country and became a theater manager and actor at the Palace Theater, an open-air theater in downtown Kingston. When there was no feature film, he offered musicians and variety artists the opportunity to perform there. The idea for the competition wasn't new. Even in the United States, his wife Lillian recognized it as an additional source of income. The first of these events was in Savannah, Georgia , in 1937 . In Jamaica, in addition to appearing during the film breaks, a competition called “Opportunity Hour” was held every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 pm, in which the audience determined the winners by the volume of applause. The winners received two pounds in cash and were featured on his radio show "Vere John's Opportunity Knocks Talent Show." The show became a success story and became so popular that it was staged in theaters in other parts of the country such as the Majestic, the Ward, the Carib, the Queens, the Gaiety, the Palladium or the Ambassador Theater. In 1952 Johns got his own column "Vere Johns Says" ("Vere Johns Says") in the Jamaica Star newspaper , in which he often addressed the topic of music.

Many of today's well-known performers owe their careers to this opportunity thanks to Johns' events, including Lloyd Charmers , Hortense Ellis , John Holt , Bob Andy , Desmond Dekker , The Wailers , Alton Ellis , Jackie Edwards , Dobby Dobson , Boris Gardiner , Laurel Aitken or Millie Small . Producers such as Coxsone Dodd or Duke Reid took interpreters from Johns' show in the 1950s and 1960s and recorded records with them in Stanley Motta's studio at 93 Hanover Street in Kingston, which they played in their sound systems .

From the first marriage, Johns had a daughter and from the second marriage two sons.

Honors

military honors

Johns was awarded the Military Medal (MM; November 1917), the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He was buried with military honors at Up Park Camp .

cultural honors

Johns became a member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in June 1953 for his journalistic services . In 1964 and 1965 he received the Seprod Award for his column in the Jamaica Star. In 2008, Johns was posthumously inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Jamaica Association of Vintage Artistes and Affiliates (JAVAA). In 2012, Olivia Grange, in her role as Minister for Youth, Sports and Culture at the time , spoke out in favor of a posthumous honor for John for his services to Jamaican music.

Footnotes

1. ^ ^{A b} Vere Johns, journalist, dies at 73 , Kingston Gleaner, September 11, 1966, pp. 1-2.
2. ↑ Vere Johns ; In: Marsha Washington George: Black Radio… Winner Takes All: America's 1St Black Djs , Xlibris, 2002, pp. 43–44.
3. ↑ Opportunity Knocks : roughly "Opportunity knocks"
4. ↑ Heather Augustyn: Ska Takes Center Stage at the Palace Theater , Foundation SKA, September 27, 2013.
5. ^ Hill, Robert A .: Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers: November 1927-August 1940 v. 7 , University of California Press, 1992, pp. 540. ISBN 978-0-520-07208-4
6. ^ Larkin, Colin: The Virgin Encyclopedia of Reggae , Virgin Books, 1998, pp. 54, 94, 124, 256. ISBN 0-7535-0242-9
7. ^ Bradley, Lloyd: This is Reggae Music , Grove Press, 2000, pp. 19-21. ISBN 0-8021-3828-4
8. ↑ Millie not so 'small' anymore , Jamaica Gleaner , October 15, 2006.
9. ^ Cooke, Mel: Lincoln traces Ambassador music role to England , Jamaica Gleaner, March 2, 2010.
10. ↑ Vere Johns gets military burial, Kingston Gleaner, September 16, 1966, p. 4. ( Memento from September 1, 2014 in the web archive archive.today )
11. ↑ Cooke, Mel: JAVAA opens Jamaica Music Hall of Fame , Jamaica Gleaner, November 16, 2008.
12. ↑ Walters, Basil: Vere Johns, forgotten man of Jamaican music: Opportunity lost , The Jamaica Observer , November 4, 2012.