BOOTS
Boots, he says was created in 1984 after a 2 am encounter outside Government House in Barbados. "I was walking along with another singer named Pompey when we heard this strange and distant sound. There was no particular national crisis at the time so we were amazed when we came upon these soldiers with back packs marching through the streets. To me it’s a waste of tax payers money. I was angry. When I got home I kept hearing in my head "left, right, left, right the government boots." This stayed with me for a couple of days and about three weeks later, the Grenada Invasion took place. In 35 minutes all verses and the melody of Boots came to me."
HIT IT
Amusingly, Hit It, the hit song of 1983, was created on a dare. Gabby says’s "Initially, I had written the song Jack for a singer called Sir Don. Soon after I gave him the song we were together at home and he said to me, ‘you wrote Jack but I bet you can’t write Jill.’ I wanted to show him that I could, so I sat down and wrote, Jill was playing cricket with me on a pasture one day. Fifteen minutes after he left my house, I called him to say that I had Jill. He was so amazed that got on his bicycle and returned to my house just to prove me a liar.
JACK
"Jack" Gabby say’s "came as a reaction to an action. It came after Jack Dear, a corporate lawyer for the Barbados Board Of Tourism made the decree that hotel owners had the right to bring their property down to the waterfront. The idea for the song came one night while I was singing a hotel. This white woman said to me, ‘could you play some local music.’ Jack was at the hotel that same night and the entire encounter led to the creation of Jack."
EMMERTON
Emmerton, is a song with a character all its own. It’s patriotic dirge: a song with such passion that the late governor general of Barbados Dame Nita Barrow requested that Gabby perform it at her funeral. Emmerton, Gabby’s hometown, was a place where the villagers praticed the barter system and often traded salt for sugar. "It was a place where neighbours were each other’s lookout. "In 1978, when I found out that we had to move, I was very hurt. People’s houses were torn down and it was very heartbreaking to see the destruction of that community. They also destroyed the environment and ecology of the place. Emmerton meant everything to me. It was my homeland; it was the place I learned to swim. I had to remember it in song. The song took me just 35 minutes to write."
DR. CASSANDRA/DEBRA
Dr. Cassandra and Debra, two of Gabby’s most recent hits, were the toast of Trinidad’s Carnival 1995. Both songs are unique in that they were not inspired by true events nor were they comment on some hot social/political issue. They are both just creations of the genius of the mind of Gabby. He explains: "I was scheduled to go in the studio but I had not written anything new. Eddy (Grant) told me that he wanted something special. We were on the plantation in Barbados and I took up Eddy’s guitar, went outside under a tree and started composing. Just like that Dr. Cassandra came to me and Debra followed right after."
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