Max Romeo, a reggae singer whose earliest hits dripped with sexual innuendo, but who then switched to a soulful, politically engaged message that provided a soundtrack to the class struggles of 1970s Jamaica and made him a mainstay on the international tour circuit, died on April 11 outside Kingston, the capital of Jamaica. He was 80.
Errol Michael Henry, a lawyer who represented Mr. Romeo, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was heart complications.
Mr. Romeo, whose real surname was Smith, was among the last of a generation of Jamaican musicians who came to prominence in the 1970s, among them Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Burning Spear. Their sound, known as roots reggae, centered on the lives of ordinary people in Jamaica, blended with a heavy dollop of Black liberation and Rastafarianism.
Until then, reggae had been seen, at least beyond Jamaica, as a musical novelty focused on fleeting love and sex. But the 1970s musicians’ political message and laid-back sound, combined with their open marijuana use, gave reggae a new and lasting cultural resonance.
Mr. Romeo’s career tracked that transition. He began as a clean-cut crooner in Jamaica, part of a trio called the Emotions. After setting out on his own, he found success with raunchy songs like “Wet Dream,” a 1968 track so explicit that many radio stations refused to play it. Nevertheless, it spent 25 weeks on the British singles chart, peaking at No. 10.
Similar songs followed, several with titles involving a feline euphemism that can’t be printed in a family newspaper. As a result, he came to be known as “the original rude boy of reggae.”
But Mr. Romeo was unhappy. He later told interviewers that he had been forced to record the songs by his producers.
“So after I see the glory of it, I give them a barrage of songs like that,” he told the Jamaican interviewer Teach Dem in 2023. “But then 1971, you know, I just pulled up and say, ‘Wait, I can’t have a catalog like this for my grandchildren.’”
He embraced Rastafarianism, grew out his hair and began recording songs about the political and class conflicts rocking Jamaica in the early 1970s.
Songs like “Revelation Time” and “Chase the Devil” became anthems for the left-wing People’s National Party and its leader, Michael Manley. Mr. Romeo stumped for Mr. Manley during his successful 1972 run for prime minister.
Mr. Romeo hit his stride in the mid-1970s, thanks to a fruitful collaboration with the reggae producer Lee (Scratch) Perry. Together they created what is widely considered Mr. Romeo’s best album, “War Ina Babylon” (1976), which included “Chase the Devil,” perhaps his best-known song.
As Jamaican politics changed through the decade, rifts grew between the Manley government and many of the leading roots musicians, including Mr. Romeo. After recording a string of songs critical of the People’s National Party, he feared retribution and moved to New York City.
The political storms eventually passed, and he returned to Jamaica in 1989. By then recognized as a paragon of reggae, Mr. Romeo recorded 17 more studio albums over the next 30 years and maintained a heavy tour schedule; on his last tour, in 2023, he performed in 56 cities.
His music took hold in other ways as well, with snippets of his lyrics appearing as samples on dance tracks and rap songs — “Chase the Devil,” for example, shows up prominently in the Prodigy’s “Out of Space” (1992) and Jay-Z’s “Lucifer” (2003).
Maxwell Livingston Smith was born on Nov. 22, 1944, in Alexandria, a town in north-central Jamaica. His mother, Emily Morris, moved to Britain when he was 8, after which he and his father, Irvin Smith, a chef, moved to Kingston.
Unhappy at home, Max ran away at 14 and spent several years living on the streets. He found work as a runner for a Kingston record label, delivering singles to local radio stations.
One day the label’s owner heard him singing and offered to record a song he had written, “I’ll Buy You a Rainbow.” It became a hit in Kingston in 1965, and it put his career in motion.
Around the same time he adopted the stage name Max Romeo, drawing on his reputation as a charmer (and his insistence that the name Max Smith lacked a certain appeal).
He briefly formed the Emotions with the singers Keith Knight and Lloyd Shakespeare, the brother of the bassist Robbie Shakespeare; he also performed with the Hippy Boys, a band that included the bassist Aston Barrett, known as Family Man, later of the Wailers.
Despite his lasting popularity in Jamaica and Europe, Mr. Romeo did not find similar success in the United States, even during his decade in New York.
It was not without trying. He contributed songs to the 1980 Broadway musical “Reggae,” produced by Michael Butler, who had also produced “Hair.” He sang backup on “Dance,” a track on the Rolling Stones’ 1980 album, “Emotional Rescue”; in return, a year later Keith Richards played on and helped produce his album “Holding Out My Love to You.”
None of it caught on. He continued to turn out albums during the 1980s, but he also worked in a record store to make money. Finally, in 1989, a friend persuaded him to return to Jamaica, and even let him live at his house for a year.
Mr. Romeo’s survivors include his wife, Charm; 11 children, including his daughter Xana and his son Azizzi, themselves famous singers; three sisters; three brothers; and numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.
Like other roots reggae artists, Mr. Romeo remained committed to his Rastafarian beliefs,; they were, he said, his core motivation for making music.
“I made a pledge to Jah that every time I open my mouth, I must be giving praise,” he told Counterpunch magazine in 2019. “Every time I move my hand, it must be something positive. But it’s always about Rastafari. And I cling to that until today. That’s my faith.”
Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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