World of Jamaican Music

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An illustrated map of the creators of Jamaican music and how they are connected.

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Ernie Smith

Artist. Reggae

Active
1967-2026
Sunrise
May 1, 1945, Kingston, Jamaica
Sunset
April 16, 2026, Miami, Florida
Also known as
Glenroy Anthony Smith, Glenroy Anthony Michael Archangelo Smith

Ernie Smith was a singer and songwriter, Federal Records' leading artist of the early 1970s, whom Bradley calls "one of Jamaica's greatest folksongwriting talents."

Born Glenroy Anthony Smith in Kingston and raised between May Pen and St. Ann, he took his nickname from the guitarist Ernest Ranglin while playing guitar in a band called the Vandals in Claremont, St. Ann. He went to Federal hoping to sell songs and ended up recording them himself, having done little singing, and "had to convince himself he was a singer of sorts"; his first record, "I Can't Take It" (1967), did little at first, and he spent about three years selling life insurance before returning to the studio in 1970.

Produced at Federal by Richard Khouri, "Bend Down" and "Ride On Sammy" went to number one in 1970 ("I was kinda talking to myself, cause I was working 5 days a week," he said of the second), followed by "One Dream" (1971) and "Pitta Patta" (1972). "Life Is Just for Living," first written as a Red Stripe beer commercial, won the Yamaha Music Festival in Tokyo in 1972, the first international award for a reggae song, and later hits included "All for Jesus" (1973) and "Duppy Gunman" (1974), sung in the heavy patois that inspired Pluto Shervington's "Ram Goat Liver." Noah Schaffer writes of his "rich baritone and playful lyrics." He wrote for others too: Ken Lazarus's "Hail the Man," a hymn to Michael Manley, and Tinga Stewart's "Play de Music," the Festival Song winner of 1974; and Johnny Nash took "I Can't Take It," as "Tears on My Pillow," to the top of the British chart in 1975. In 1973 he became the first musician to receive the Badge of Honour.

In 1976 "The Power and the Glory" was banned from the radio and taken as an attack on Manley's government, and after threats on his life Smith moved his family to Toronto, where he went on recording. He came home in 1988 or 1989, formed a new band, the New Agenda, and kept performing; he received the Order of Distinction in 2006. He departed in a Miami hospital in April 2026, at eighty.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 282.
  2. "The Music Diaries: Ernie Smith Rakes In the Hits," Jamaica Gleaner, May 12, 2017, https://past.jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20170514/music-diaries-ernie-smith-rakes-hits. "Glenroy 'Ernie' Smith," Music Unites Jamaica, accessed October 21, 2026, https://www.musicunitesjamaica.com/ernie-smith.html. "Ernie Smith: The Unwilling Star," Clinton Lindsay, February 23, 2014, https://clintonlindsay.com/2014/02/23/ernie-smith-the-unwilling-star.
  3. "Glenroy 'Ernie' Smith," which names Khouri as producer. "The Music Diaries." "Ernie Smith: The Unwilling Star."
  4. "The Music Diaries." On Pluto Shervington: see his entry, and Howard Campbell, "Ernie Smith, Beloved Jamaican Singer, Has Died," Jamaica Observer, April 16, 2026, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2026/04/16/ernie-smith-beloved-jamaican-singer-died/, which calls Smith and Shervington the main artists at Federal. Noah Schaffer, "Music Preview: Ernie Smith and the Underrated Sound of Jamaica's Storytellers," Arts Fuse, August 11, 2015, https://artsfuse.org/?p=132509.
  5. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 282. "The Music Diaries." "Glenroy 'Ernie' Smith."
  6. "Glenroy 'Ernie' Smith," which also lists his induction into the Reggae Hall of Fame (2001) and the Bronze Musgrave Medal (2003).
  7. "Glenroy 'Ernie' Smith." "The Music Diaries," which says the government banned "We De People/The Power and the Glory" with two other songs, and that he moved between Florida and Canada. Bradley notes his warning that "Jah Kingdom Go to Waste." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 471.
  8. "Glenroy 'Ernie' Smith," which dates the return to 1988, after Hurricane Gilbert; "The Music Diaries" gives 1989. Campbell, "Ernie Smith, Beloved Jamaican Singer, Has Died," on University of Miami Hospital and his age. "Tributes Pour In for Iconic Reggae Singer-Songwriter Ernie Smith Who Died Yesterday at Age 80," Irie FM, April 17, 2026, https://iriefm.net/tributes-pour-in-for-iconic-reggae-singer-songwriter-ernie-smith-who-died-yesterday-at-age-80/, which says he "died last evening."

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