Dwight Pinkney
Artist. Rocksteady, reggae, dancehall
- Active
- 1963-present
- Sunrise
- c. 1945, Manchester, Jamaica
Dwight Pinkney is a guitarist whose three bands span the music from rocksteady to dancehall: the Sharks, Zap Pow, which he co-founded, and the Roots Radics, the session band of the early 1980s.
Born in Manchester parish, he took his first model from the twanging guitar of the Ventures, and he and his bandmates learned their chords from beginners' books. In the mid-1960s he formed the Sharks, meant to be "the Jamaican counterpart to the Beatles," a backing band that worked with vocal groups of the day, among them the Wailers. He later studied arranging at the Jamaica School of Music under Melba Liston. He encouraged the schoolteacher Norma Fraser to sing, before she went to Studio One.
In 1969 he and the bassist Michael "Mikey" Williams founded Zap Pow, a progressive band whose horn section included David Madden and Glenn DaCosta, and whose "This Is Reggae Music" was a hit in the early 1970s; in 1975 he brought Beres Hammond into the band as lead singer. In the early 1980s he joined the Roots Radics, the band behind Junjo Lawes's hits, which also recorded and toured with Bunny Wailer, Gregory Isaacs and Israel Vibration. He saw his part as adding "a more orthodox, for want of a better word, aspect to the more raw reggae roots" of what he called "a powerful gutsy band": phrases over its heavy low end, and tweaks to arrangements such as "Night Nurse." His ability to write music out made him its bandleader. A friend of the Radics' Bingy Bunny Lamont, he recites the tribute poem that opens a compilation of Lamont's work.
His first solo album, Jamaican Memories by the Score, came out in 1999, followed by others including Dwight Pinkney Picks Marley Melodies; he received the Order of Distinction in 2014. With Glenn DaCosta he re-formed Zap Pow, and the band returned with a new album in 2017.
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- The Wailers (backed)
- Gregory Isaacs (backed)
- The Roots Radics (band)
- Beres Hammond (bandmate)
- Bunny Wailer (backed)
- David Madden (bandmate)
- Zap Pow (band)
- Israel Vibration (backed)
- Sonny Bradshaw (bandleader)
- Glenn DaCosta (bandmate)
- Norma Fraser (mentee)
- Henry "Junjo" Lawes (session work)
Notes
- Howard Campbell, "Pinkney Ventures on New Project," Jamaica Observer, February 14, 2012, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2012/02/14/pinkney-ventures-on-new-project.
- Campbell, "Pinkney Ventures on New Project," quoting him on the Ventures and naming the Wailers among the groups the Sharks backed. "Dwight Pinkney," Wikipedia, accessed October 21, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_Pinkney, citing Colin Larkin and Wolfgang Moskowitz, for the mid-1960s and a birth year of 1945. Angus Taylor, "Dwight Pinkney: A Tale of Two Interviews," World A Reggae, November 21, 2020, https://www.worldareggae.com/?p=60440.
- See the Norma Fraser entry.
- Campbell, "Pinkney Ventures on New Project," which dates the hit to 1971. On Hammond, see his entry.
- Campbell, "Pinkney Ventures on New Project," which calls the Radics "arguably the hottest band of the 1980s." "Dwight Pinkney."
- Taylor, "A Tale of Two Interviews."
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 206, which names him as Lamont's friend and fellow Radic.
- Campbell, "Pinkney Ventures on New Project." "Dwight Pinkney," on the Order of Distinction. Howard Campbell, "The Return of Zap Pow," Jamaica Observer, October 4, 2017, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2017/10/04/the-return-of-zap-pow, quoting him: "Wi had a vision to be the top band inna Jamaica."
