Edi Fitzroy
Artist. Reggae, dancehall
- Active
- 1978-2017
- Sunrise
- c. 1955, Clarendon, Jamaica
- Sunset
- March 3, 2017, May Pen, Clarendon, Jamaica
- Also known as
- Fitzroy Edwards
Edi Fitzroy was a roots singer whose hits of the late 1970s and 1980s, from "Miss Molly Colly" to "Check for You Once," kept a cultural voice in the early dancehall era; the Rough Guide calls him "not a typical dancehall singer."
Born Fitzroy Edwards in Clarendon, he was the son of Vasco Edwards, a sound-system operator of the 1950s. He worked as an accountant at the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation, where he helped Michael Campbell, the future Mikey Dread, to a job as an engineer in 1976, and it was for Mikey Dread, whose Dread at the Controls program ran on the station, that he made his first local hits; "Miss Molly Colly" was his breakthrough in 1978.
In the early 1980s he recorded for Trevor Elliott's Musical Ambassador label, which, in the Rough Guide's account, is best remembered for his hits "Check for You Once Girl" and "Youthman Penitentiary," and for an album named after the first that was "largely cultural"; "The Gun" and "Princess Black," with Sly and Robbie, were among his other hits of the decade, and the Roots Radics played on "Check for You Once." He stayed on as an accountant at the broadcaster for the rest of his life, and departed at May Pen Hospital in March 2017, at sixty-one; Trevor Elliott held back his last album, Alpha Omega, until 2018, unwilling to seem to be "making hay off my friend's death."
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Mikey Dread (producer)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 285.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 285. "Roots Singer Edi Fitzroy Is Dead," Jamaica Observer, March 4, 2017, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Roots-singer-Edi-Fitzroy-is-dead, which says he died "in his native Clarendon."
- Brian Bonitto, "Edi Fitzroy Gets Fond Farewell," Jamaica Observer, March 27, 2017, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2017/03/27/edi-fitzroy-gets-fond-farewell/, which dates "Miss Molly Colly" to 1978. On Mikey Dread's job, see his entry. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 238, 285.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 285. "Edi Fitzroy Gets Fond Farewell." Howard Campbell, "Music Producer Trevor Elliott Has Died," Jamaica Observer, July 15, 2026, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2026/07/15/music-producer-trevor-elliott-died/, which spells the label "Music Ambassador." Howard Campbell, "An Ode to Edi," Jamaica Observer, March 18, 2018, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2018/03/18/an-ode-to-edi/.
- "Roots Singer Edi Fitzroy Is Dead," which says he "died Saturday at the May Pen Hospital"; Bonitto gives March 3, 2017. Bonitto, "Edi Fitzroy Gets Fond Farewell." Campbell, "An Ode to Edi."
