Sonny Bradshaw
1926 – October 10, 2009
Sonny Bradshaw was a beloved Jamaican musician whose career spanned a remarkable six decades. He was as multi-faceted as he was renowned. Besides playing the trumpet, piano, trombone, saxophone, and clarinet, Bradshaw was a composer, arranger, producer, journalist and promoter. During the ’50s, he formed the Sonny Bradshaw 7, which turned out to be the first significant musical home of many great Jamaican musicians to come. In the early ’60s, Bradshaw began working in radio, with his Teenage Dance Party, becoming the first place many Jamaicans heard the early songs of future legends. On October 10, 2009, Sonny Bradshaw died after having been ill following a stroke a few months earlier. He was 83 years old.