By: Claudia Gardner
The first time Negril was immortalized in song, it came in 1983 courtesy of a self-produced track by the late Reggae star, Tyrone Taylor.
The song, considered one of Jamaica’s greatest classics, was Cottage in Negril.
It was a five-minute long, masterfully elocuted, soulful delivery which propelled Taylor to national stardom, and also made him a star on the European continent.
Taylor, a native of neighbouring St. Elizabeth, was a lover of, not only the world-famous beach destination which spans Hanover and Westmoreland parishes, but of the women there.
Contrary to foreign media reports that Cottage in Negril referred to a “problematic romantic liaison the singer experienced with an overseas visitor”, Lenbert Williams, a born Negrilier and operator of the One Love Bus Pub Crawl, who knew Tyrone quite well, said this was far from the truth, as the love he refers to in the song, is a “gorgeous” Negril lady named Sadie, who was his girlfriend.
“And you now, there is a romance within that song, which I am privy to that nuff people don’t now. The girl is Sadie. I am not going to mention her last name, but Sadie was the most beautiful thing on the planet, back then and Tyrone Taylor was blown away by her beauty and her charm and mystique. And that was what really made Tyrone do that song you know,” Williams told Negril Times.
“He even mentioned “Jenny’s favourite cake (ganja). Jenny was Sadie’s mother,” Williams added, alluding to the line “jammin sensimina cake”.
So by Williams’ account, while Tyrone’s soulful, self-produced effort, is about the delights of the Capital of Casual, interestingly even mentioning tourists “sniffing cocaine”, its core focus is about missing his love Sadie, evidenced especially at the beginning of the song, where he sings:
“From a little cottage in Negril, I wrote these lines to you/From a little cottage in Negril, I realise I love you still.”
The yearning for Sadie continues with “Gee I miss you, how my lips want to kiss you/ called you on the phone/To my surprise you weren’t at home”.
Tyrone lived in Negril at a time when the town was abuzz with live Reggae shows every night, and was quite familiar with the community people there.
“I know Tyrone’s mother who is an onion farmer in St Elizabeth you know. So Tyrone had this rural Jamaica background and then he came to Negril and got engulfed in the charm and the beauty but he never lost the rural touch. And so Sadie was something that probably reminded him of where him some from, his mother and so on, that conservative kind of a background,” Williams said.
In terms of the song itself, Williams pointed out that it a favourite of his thousands of overseas guests. For him, the song is the most valuable piece of international marketing Negril has ever had.
“As opposed to General Trees’ song (Gone A Negril), Tyrone Taylor’s song has an international flavour and still does. And it is still popular among the travelling public wide and far. On my tour, when I put on From a little Cottage in Negril, di response is immediate. And if I don’t play it, people are demanding that I play it,” he said.
Ricks Café, now world famous as one of the best sunset-watching spots on Negril’s West End, was also immortalized in Cottage in Negril, with Tyrone, pointing it out as a spot where gallivanting tourists and Jamaicans alike would “go west, to watch sunset at the Rick’s Cafe”.
The impact of Cottage in Negril on Rick’s Café fame is something Williams says must never be taken for granted either.
“And so similar to what Mr. Trees has done for Negril locally, Tyrone has done for Negril internationally. And Rick’s Café, probably would not have been Rick’s Café – the status it has enjoyed up to now, without that song,” he said.
“His contribution to the development of tourism in Negril is immense. We can’t pay for that either. And Tyrone, yuh dead and gone, but you should have been awarded for your contribution to Negril,” Williams added.
Tyrone Taylor’s recording career began in the 1970s when he recorded several songs for several popular producers, but it was not until 1983 that he scored bigtime, with Cottage in Negril.
Cottage in Negril became his signature song, and appeared on Reggae compilations done by European record companies.
As Cottage in Negril increasingly found favour with overseas audiences, MCA records signed Tyrone, who became the best-selling Reggae singer of 1983.
Sadly, Tyrone struggled with substance misuse for a long time and also suffered two strokes. He died from prostate cancer in Kingston on December 1, 2007 at age 50.
