Sammy Dread
Artist. Dancehall, roots
- Active
- 1970s-1980s
- Sunrise
- Greenwich Town, Kingston, Jamaica
- Also known as
- Stewart Farquharson
Sammy Dread (Stewart Farquharson) was, with the child star Little John, one of the two singers the Rough Guide takes as the definition of early dancehall vocals: performers with a seemingly endless knack for placing new lyrics over vintage riddims and delivering them with roughhouse enthusiasm.
He came out of Don Mais's Greenwich Town circle, singing for Mais's Roots Tradition label over riddims by the Soul Syndicate and the musicians who became the Roots Radics, and he also had roots records on Bertram Brown's Freedom Sounds. His style, the Rough Guide says, had about as much finesse as his name, but on the right riddim, over several thousand watts of sound system, he could create real excitement, and he summed up a new generation of singers' answer to the roughhouse deejays. His best single, "Road Block" (1982), over Channel One's cut of "Full Up," came out on the studio's Hitbound label, and he recorded for Joe Gibbs, Linval Thompson and Hyman "Jah Life" Wright as well. Singers like him, Sugar Minott and Little John, who sang over exclusive riddims the way the deejays chatted, were the model for British sound-system singers such as Maxi Priest.
Last updated October 14, 2026
Connections
- Soul Syndicate (backing group)
- The Roots Radics (backing group)
- Joe Gibbs (producer)
- Linval Thompson (producer)
- Bertram Brown (producer)
- Channel One (studio)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 250.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 186, 250.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 250, 283.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 282-83, 288, 428; "Sammy Dread: Road Block," Discogs, accessed October 7, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/master/769765.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 405.
