Sonny Bradshaw
Artist. Ska
- Active
- 1947-2009
- Sunrise
- c. 1926, Jamaica
- Sunset
- October 10, 2009, London, England
- Also known as
- Sonny Bradshaw Seven, Jamaica Big Band
Sonny Bradshaw was a trumpeter, bandleader, broadcaster and organizer whose bands trained generations of Jamaican musicians and whose radio shows helped turn the Jamaican chart from American records to Jamaican ones.
In 1947 he promoted the first of a series of All Stars concerts at which, by the Rough Guide's account, nearly every Jamaican musician of note played, and in 1950 he formed the Sonny Bradshaw Seven, with the saxophonist Joe Harriott among its members. His band and Val Bennett's were the top-class dance bands of the early 1950s, playing the arrangements of their American models. With the pianist Lloyd Adams he devised a series of Ward Theatre jazz concerts, from 1954 to 1958, that featured only Jamaican musicians. Over the years Charley Organaire, Sparrow Martin, Glen Brown, the singer Totlyn Jackson and the pianist Marjorie Whylie all played or sang with his bands, and Dwight Pinkney passed through his big band.
At the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation he devised Teenage Dance Party, which traveled the island broadcasting live, with a "Hit or Miss" section in which the young crowd cheered or heckled new records, and Jamaican Hit Parade, a live Friday show from the Regal Theatre at Cross Roads; Bradley credits the two with turning the new Jamaican Top 30 from American records to Jamaican ones within two months. He later served for two decades as president of the Jamaica Federation of Musicians, and in 1979 he took the idea for the Tastee Talent Contest to the company's head, Vincent Chang.
His band went on giving young players their start, the saxophonist Dean Fraser the best known among them, and in later years he and his wife, the singer Myrna Hague-Bradshaw, ran the Ocho Rios Jazz Festival. He received the Order of Distinction. He departed in a London hospital in October 2009, at eighty-three, after a stroke.
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Myrna Hague (wife)
- Glen Brown (band member)
- Charley Organaire (band member)
- Dwight Pinkney (band member)
- Sparrow Martin (band member)
- Totlyn Jackson (band member)
- Marjorie Whylie (band member)
- Dean Fraser (mentee)
Notes
- Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 89. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 48.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 48.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 28, quoting a musician's memories of the early 1950s.
- Heather Augustyn, "Jazz Jamaica: Sonny Bradshaw," Skabook, August 22, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/08/22/jazz-jamaica-sonny-bradshaw.
- See the entries for each. On Pinkney, "R.I.P. Sonny Bradshaw & Louisa Mark," Reggae.be, October 21, 2009, https://www.reggae.be/nl/magazine/archive/2009-10-21-r-i-p-sonny-bradshaw-louisa-mark/, from the Jamaica Observer.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 89. Reggae.be, quoting the Observer, places Teenage Dance Party in the 1970s. "R.I.P. Sonny Bradshaw & Louisa Mark."
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 48. "Tastee Talent Contest: The Brainchild of Sonny Bradshaw," Jamaica Gleaner, October 16, 2009, https://old.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20091016/ent/ent1.html, which dates the first contest to March 1979.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 48. "Tastee Talent Contest," on the festival and the Order of Distinction. "R.I.P. Sonny Bradshaw & Louisa Mark," which reports the Observer of October 12, 2009: he died on Saturday night in a London hospital, where he had been since a stroke in August, at 83; the Gleaner also says he died "on Saturday in England."
