First of all, after Bob, somebody who I felt could have been a big star was Jacob Miller. Bob basically became a rock star in Jamaican music, and Jacob, I felt, could have done the same. He was a big guy, but an incredible personality. Incredible. I mean, I have a picture of Bob and Jacob and myself standing in front of a plane, and you look at it, and you would say that Jacob is the biggest star there without any question. He just had that presence. But then he was killed in a car crash, and things ended before they began.
–Chris Blackwell, talking about Jacob Miller (original post here).
Jacob Miller is one of the exceedingly rare musicians who it’s easy to fall in love with both quickly and deeply. There is likely to be no middle ground: you hear that ebullient, irrepressible voice and it’s either on or you are, sorry to say, not capable of handling this kind of truth. He’s that good. Which makes it that much more agonizing to contemplate how little of him we got to enjoy. But that we received even an inkling is a blessing of considerable magnitude and, as always, it behooves us to appreciate the bigger picture. Jacob Miller did not make reggae music, he was reggae music. In an ongoing series to celebrate the end of summer, here is a sampler of Miller bliss. Just try not to fall in love.
