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Beres earns National Honours

IN terms of hit songs and endurance, Beres Hammond’s place among the great reggae singers is assured.

Those qualities have earned the 60-year-old Hammond the Order of Jamaica (OJ) from the Jamaican government, which cited “his exceptional and dedicated contribution to the Jamaican music industry”.

The government announced its annual National Honours and Awards list Monday evening.

Hammond is among seven persons who will receive Jamaica’s fourth highest honour, to be handed out by Governor General Sir Patrick Allen on October 21 at King’s House.

The St Mary-born Hammond has been recording since the early 1970s. Though he first came to prominence as lead singer for the Zap Pow band and a solo balladeer with producer Willie Lindo during that decade, it was not until the 1980s when he embraced the emerging dancehall sound that he broke through in a big way.

The Lindo-produced What One Dance Can Do revived his career in the mid-1980s. By the next decade, Hammond was a bona fide star, recording countless hit songs for producers like Donovan Germain, head of Penthouse Records.