The Half That's Never Been Told: The Real Life Reggae Adventures of Doctor Dread

Description

Doctor Dread has committed his life to producing reggae music and releasing it on his label, RAS Records. He has become one of the world's foremost reggae producers, and has worked with almost all the genre's icons: Bunny Wailer, Black Uhuru, Ziggy and Damian Marley, Gregory Isaacs and more. The Half That's Never Been Told, full of behind-the-scenes stories, has shocking chapters that will reveal aspects of reggae that have never before been explored.

Doctor Dread was born and raised in the Washington, DC area. Upon first hearing reggae music in 1972 he became completely enthralled by Jamaican culture and the tenets of Rastafari. This was reinforced when he became a deejay on the DC-area progressive radio station WHFS, where he first took on the moniker of Doctor Dread (his real name is Gary Himelfarb). He next founded RAS Records, which was responsible for distributing and producing reggae artists from Jamaica to every corner of the earth. Doctor Dread forged very intimate relationships with the artists of Jamaica and to this day remains committed to the culture and people of this country he has come to call his true home. He also founded his own line of Jamaican food items, Doctor Dread's Famous Jamaican Jerk Products, which include seasonings, potato chips, and peanuts, with many more products in the works. He is the author of The Half That's Never Been Told: The Real Life Reggae Adventures of Doctor Dread.

Doctor Dread has been a very serious contributor to the global value of this great reggae music...Apart from being a serious businessman, Doctor Dread to I is a brother... --Bunny Wailer, from the Introduction No reggae fan can afford to miss this lively, rich, from-the-hip account from one of the industry's most unlikely visionaries. And no human being can afford to miss this story of spiritual questing, cultural boundary-crossing, and the transformative power of music. --Adam Mansbach, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Go the F**k to Sleep From the very inside of the Jamaican music business and its gnarly secrets to his intimate contacts with its greatest movers and shakers, Doctor Dread has told a story only he can fully elucidate. Amusing, insightful, deeply revealing, and certain to be controversial, Doc's book pulls the covers off Bunny Wailer, Gregory Isaacs, Freddie McGregor, and countless other world-famous iconic figures, giving us the day-to-day tussles and rewards of being one of the prime exposers of Jah Music in North America through his award-winning RAS Records. Essential to an overstanding of what really a gwan inna yard. Highly recommended. --Roger Steffens, founding editor, The Beat; founding chairman of the Reggae Grammy Committee (1984-2011)