Gregory enjoys 'normal life' - Musical journey begins with Cadbury Roses chocolates

Mel Cooke, Gleaner Writer

After living in Germany for 35 years and touring all over the world, Tony Gregory has been back home for a decade, happily living a "normal life" - for once.

"I have been in this business from I was 10 years old. All your time is spent in hotel rooms, in airports, on planes. You never get to see the country. My dream was to have a normal life - get up, eat breakfast, work in my garden, walk with my dog. You couldn't do it in Kingston so you do it in the country. My wife is from Italy and we want that life," Gregory said.

"I have a lovely garden. I live normally, going to the market, going to the shop, going to bed early."

It has been around the world and back home for Tony Gregory who said he has to 'big up' Alpha, the institution which has turned out so many standout Jamaican musicians. "They saw I was introduced to music," he said. And he also earned a scholarship to go to a school outside of Alpha, where he sang on the Cathedral Boys' Choir, learnt "arranging and all that", and also learnt subject areas outside of music.

Then he went with Alpha students to a double bill at the Carib cinema, Cross Roads, on a Saturday morning. During intermission, Vere Johns ran a talent contest with Frankie Bonito playing piano. "The boys in my class pushed me to go on stage. That is the best push I ever got," he said.

Winning selection

Gregory had never performed the Judy Garland number Somewhere Over the Rainbow before, but that is what he chose when Bonito asked him what he knew. "We found a key right there and I started," Gregory said.

He won a box of Cadbury Roses chocolates for first prize ("I think I gave one or two away") but, more important, it was the start of Gregory's life in singing. "That moment of winning that box of chocolates was really the start," he said. Gregory was between eight and 10 years old and competed in the Vere Johns shows at various cinemas. Now he was up against big people and the next song he selected was Silver Thread Among the Gold. "I sung that until I won the finals," he said.

He won another contest, an all-island championship run by Clement 'Sir Coxson' Dodd at the Ward Theatre in 1958. "From then on, at 12 years old, I considered myself a professional," Gregory said.

Gregory worked in the Bertie King Band, played with Byron Lee and the Dragonaires for three years, starting in 1960, and also recorded his first single, Baby Come On Home , with Maria Elena on the B Side. Working with Byron Lee led Gregory to his first tour, in the Caribbean, as well as sharing the bill with North American stars - Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Dionne Warwick, Jerry Butler, The Drifters, The Platters and Ben E. King.

Gregory left the band to record with Coxson, his last Studio One song being his arrangement of Only a Fool Breaks His Own Heart.

Overseas ventures

In 1966 Gregory migrated to Canada. From there he did almost a year in England with the Counts, including Count Prince Miller. He did not record again until 1971, hitting the studio with a 40-piece orchestra in England. Bouncing All Over The World did not sell many copies, but it got a lot of airplay and, through the B Side, I Love You So, he learnt the value of publishing.

He went to Germany in 1971 to promote that song and "I got stuck there - happily stuck. I got a lot of offers to sing and write". There was a point he did not come back to Jamaica for five years and played behind the then Iron Curtain - the USSR, Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia among his stops.

The hits came - One More Time was a huge-selling album, Gregory said. Plus, there were the songwriting successes - King Kong, written for two Filipino women in Germany and which was recorded by Japanese and Irish singers, among others.

A lot of that work was not released in Jamaica, but the album Coming on Strong was, as was the popular single, Angella (for which, Gregory said, he did a video on 16 mm film).

He did his last production in 1999 and is enjoying the quiet life, "but if you are a musician it is in your blood, you get the itch. And my wife sees me getting fidgety". He has done four shows in the last two weeks (including his post-award stint at 'Tribute To The Greats' at the end of July) and, as each requires multiple rehearsals, "it has been hectic".

"The itch is there, but I am not going to do that much ... . I think I want to do another 10-year run, but slowly. I will not do a lot of it. I do quality work. I try to be a perfectionist."

"I see my colleagues do this thing 'til they fall down onstage. I did not want to go like that," Tony Gregory said.

Gregory