Don Drummond (12 March 1932Cane-Honeysett, L: ''Don Drummond Memorial Album'', liner notes. Trojan 2009. – 6 May 1969) was a Jamaican

ska Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walki ...

trombonist The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...

and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

. He was one of the original members of

The Skatalites The Skatalites are a ska band from Jamaica. They played initially between 1963 and 1965, and recorded many of their best known songs in the period, including " Guns of Navarone." They also played on records by Prince Buster and backed many othe ...

, and composed many of their tunes. In 1966, Drummond was convicted of murdering his 23-year-old lover, Anita "Marguerita" Mahfood.

Biography

Drummond was born at the Jubilee Hospital in Kingston,

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

, to Doris Monroe and Uriah Drummond. He was educated at Kingston's

Alpha Boys School Alpha Cottage School (often referred to as Alpha Boys School, Convent of Mercy "Alpha" Academy and now called Alpha Institute) was the name of the vocational residential school on South Camp Road in Kingston, Jamaica, still run by Roman Catholic ...

, where he later taught his younger schoolmate Rico Rodriguez to play the

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...

. His musical career began in 1950 with the Eric Dean's All-Stars where he performed jazz. He continued into the 1960s with others, including Kenny Williams. After performing jazz for a decade, Drummond began performing ska and in 1964 he joined

. With Drummond's politicized conversion to the

Rastafari movement Rastafari, sometimes called Rastafarianism, is a religion that developed in Jamaica during the 1930s. It is classified as both a new religious movement and a social movement by scholars of religion. There is no central authority in control o ...

, other band members followed his lead.Porter, Darwin, and Danforth Prince (2006). ''Frommer's Jamaica'', Edition 4 (Illustrated). London: Frommer's. p. 262. , . He became a household name in Jamaica, before suffering mental health problems. It has been said that pianist

George Shearing Sir George Albert Shearing, (13 August 1919 14 February 2011) was a British jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for Discovery Records, MGM Records and Capitol Records. Shearing was the composer of over 300 t ...

rated him as being among the world's top five trombone players. On 2 January 1965, Drummond's live-in lover, Anita "Marguerita" Mahfood, was found dead with four stab wounds to the chest. Drummond reported to the police that Mahfood had stabbed herself, but, in 1966, he was found guilty of her murder. Drummond was ruled criminally insane and imprisoned at Bellevue Asylum, Kingston, where he remained until his death four years later.Campbell, Howard (2013)
Don D's Rebirth
, ''Jamaica Observer'', 15 August 2013. Retrieved 18 August 2013. The official cause of death was "natural causes", possibly heart failure caused by malnutrition or improper medication, but other theories were put forward; some of his colleagues believed it was a government plot against the Kingston musical scene, and some believed that he was killed by gangsters as revenge for the murder of Mahfood. Heather Augustyn, author of a biography of Drummond published in 2013 claimed to have proved that Drummond's death was caused by his medications.

Legacy

In 2013, a

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

telling the story of Drummond's life was performed by the

National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (NDTC) is Jamaica's leading dance theatre company. History The company was founded in 1962 by Rex Nettleford and Eddy Thomas with fifteen dancers, with Nettleford acting as its artistic director and pri ...

.Johnson, Richard (2013)
A Ballet for 'Don D'
, ''Jamaica Observer'', 21 July 2013. Retrieved 10 August 2013. Created by Clive Thompson, the ballet is titled ''Malungu'', which was Mahfood's pet name for Drummond. In 2013 a comprehensive biography of Don Drummond was published by McFarland Publishing. ''Don Drummond: The Genius and Tragedy of the World's Greatest Trombonist'' by Heather Augustyn features a foreword by

Delfeayo Marsalis Delfeayo Marsalis (; born July 28, 1965) is an American jazz trombonist, record producer and educator. Life and career Marsalis was born in New Orleans, the son of Dolores (née Ferdinand) and Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., a pianist and music pro ...

References

External links

* *
Short biography
at allaboutjazz.com

* ttps://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/don-drummond/ Don Drummond: The Genius and Tragedy of the World's Greatest Trombonist

{{DEFAULTSORT:Drummond, Don 1932 births 1969 deaths Converts to the Rastafari movement Jamaican people convicted of murder Jamaican people who died in prison custody Jamaican Rastafarians Jamaican ska trombonists People convicted of murder by Jamaica Musicians from Kingston, Jamaica Prisoners who died in Jamaican detention The Skatalites members Island Records artists Trojan Records artists First-wave ska groups 20th-century trombonists