About Me
JAH RUBY: friend of Jamaica's famous Balford Henry, Staff Reporter After 28 years in the music business, entertainer Jah Ruby (Everald Metcalf) best remembers his childhood friendship with the late Bob Marley; memories like: Marley living at Oxford Street in West Kingston, while he lived nearby at the corner of Charles Street and Spanish Town Road; going to the once famous inner-city swimming area known as Hot And Cold, near the Jamaica Public Service Company's plant at the old Foreshore Road (Marcus Garvey Drive); calling Marley, 'white boy' and going with him to Seprod to collect copra. "We used to stop at a place called Grand Ma Joint, when we left Hot and Cold, to eat corn bread, pudding and a mixture of milk and syrup. I never forget the day Bob ate all the pudding and everybody wanted to beat him up," he recalled. Ruby said he introduced Marley to Derrick Morgan, when they were only teenagers. He even remembered the first car Marley owned - "a cream coloured Vauxhall Viva." Marley went on to become one of the world's biggest pop stars, but the multi-talented Ruby is still struggling to reach the top. He has been residing in the United States for the past 17 years and has so many stories to tell about his colourful times with reggae acts like Barrington Levy, Jah Thomas, Gregory Isaacs, the Melodians, Ken Boothe, John Holt and Little John. Ruby has been working closely of late with overseas-based Jamaican promoters like Danny
Selassie's Mystic Vibes Productions. He is currently putting together his own production, featuring Sizzla and Rankin Joe for mid-August in Orlando. His origins as an entertainer dates back to 1962, as a member of a group, The Schoolboys, who recorded a famous ska cover of the R&B hit, Dilly Dilly, for Prince Buster. Ruby then went solo as Everald Metcalf (his real name) in 1965 and recorded a song named Problem. He followed up with Let's Take Another Walk in 1966. He was christened Jack Ruby by the notorious Feather Mop in 1963, but didn't decide to use it as his stage name until 1966. Having started out as a singer, he switched to deejaying in the late 1960s, at the suggestion of Spanish Town-based deejay I.Roy ('Soldering') and started working with a number of sound systems. In 1976, he changed his name to Jah Ruby to differentiate from Ocho Rios producer Jack Ruby, after an interview about him appeared in the press with Jack's picture. He recorded his second album, Dread Affair, that same year for singer/producer Barry Biggs. Then came the song Ruby was best known for, Free Michael Bernard, about a Jamaican man who was on death row and for whom there was a national campaign, locally, promoting his innocence. That year, Ruby's career took another turn, when he decided to turn to dancing and formed the Black Invaders, which rivalled Scorch as the hottest dance groups on stage in the mid-70s to early 1980s. Ruby recalled that of the six of them who formed the dance group, three have died tragically abroad. Another of his talents came to the fore when he was selected to play a role in the local film, Rockers, which featured a number of leading Jamaican entertainers of the '70s such as Jacob Miller, Leroy 'Horse Mouth' Wallace, Big Youth, Dirty Harry and Leroy Smart. He and the Black Invaders were chosen to work in the film after beating out their rivals Scorch, Ants and Roach dance groups in the auditions. Ruby went on to work with some of the island's top sound systems, including Metro Media, before he emigrated to New York in 1983, where he became close to top Jamaican-born radio DJs Gil Bailey and Clinton Lindsay. He gained prominence there when he appeared on a show in memory of the reggae singer Alton Black who died in the early 1990s in a motor vehicle accident in Brooklyn. Ruby started working with his old friends the Melodians, joining Lloyd Brevette and Brent Dowe on their New York engagements. Since then, Ruby has continued to work intermittently on the Jamaican reggae scene in New York as well.
