Catch a Fire by Timothy White

Author:Timothy White [White, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85712-136-3
Publisher: Music Sales Corp.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

In the early 1970s, Chris Blackwell bought a run-down great house at 56 Hope Road in uptown Kingston. It was a two-story jalousied building set back from the road behind rusty iron gates. In back of the main building were several acres of propery bisected by a rambling succession of shacks, sheds and decrepit carriage houses.

The palatially shabby complex was just down the street from both the prime minister’s residence and Devon House, a showpiece of colonial architecture built in 1881 by a millionaire who had made his bucks in South America. Now an official landmark, Devon House was the preferred site for fashion shows and “ethnic dance concerts” sponsored by the society ladies of St. Andrew.

Blackwell’s new address, renamed Island House, was the command post for his expanding reggae interests in Kingston. It was also an attempt to put down some new roots of his own in Jamaica. When the Terra Nova had been sold in 1960, his mother retreated to Bolt House, a North Coast mansion built on a sweeping lawn overlooking the sea in Port Maria. Blanche Blackwell had also let go of the family’s summer retreat in the Blue Mountains—a large hilltop cottage in an area called Greenwich, not far from Newcastle, an old cliffside fort high in the mists where the Jamaica Defense forces trained, and Red Light, the village where the off-duty soldiers did their whoring.

Although the record business had been good to him, Chris was in need of personal renewal, having been through an unsuccessful marriage with Josephine Heimann, the wealthy ex-wife of one of his best friends, David Heimann. And then there had been an extended affair with Esther Anderson, a beautiful mulatto Jamaican film actress from the village of Esher, St. Marys. The daughter of an East Indian mother and a prominent white Jamaican architect, Esther had starred in such British films as The Touchables (1968), and had just completed shooting on A Warm December, playing opposite Sidney Poitier, who also directed the film.

Besides being prime real estate, Island House was a sentimental choice for a new base in uptown Kingston, since it was just a five-minute drive from the Terra Nova. And to compensate for the loss of the beloved retreat in Greenwich, Chris had Strawberry Hill, a rambling estate in the Blue Mountains which was perched on a knoll midway between Irish Town (where the retired Bustamante lived) and Newcastle. From the back porch of the run-down planter’s house in the center of the grounds, he could glimpse the old cottage through the slow-drifting cloud cover.

Bob had begun to frequent Island House late in 1972 and was plainly covetous of the place. Surprisingly, Blackwell seemed to enjoy this. By the time Catch a Fire was released, he had made a deal with Blackwell whereby he would eventually take over the property so that he would have a proper address at which to meet and greet the press. He moved in with several dread brethren and Lee Jaffe, a white American musician-filmmaker who had met Bob in New York City through Jim Capaldi of Traffic.

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