Tom Browne ~ Funkin' For Jamaica (N.Y.) 1980 Jazz Funk Purrfection Version

Jazz trumpeter Tom Browne topped the R&B charts for four weeks with a song that was a valentine to his Jamaica home in Queens, New York. Jamaica is a middle class neighborhood that has a large African American and Caribbean population. It was established in 1656 as a colony when the Dutch ruled New Netherlands which included territory now held by New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut and parts of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

The name Jamaica came from the Lenape Indians who called the area "yamecah" which meant beaver. The Dutch spelled it with a "j", which in their language is sounds like "y". Over time, the English took over and retained the Dutch spelling of jamecah and the hard J sound slowly took over and the name transformed to Jamaica.

Thomas Frederick Browne was born October 30, 1954 in Jamaica, Queens. He was a student of New York's High School of Music and Art he became a regular on the New York jazz scene as a trumpet player and in 1978 he played in a club where George Benson also played and was offered a contract with GRP Music, distributed by Clive Davis' Arista Records.

He is also a licensed air pilot in addition to gigging with other jazz greats like Lonnie Liston Smith, Sonny Fortune and Weldon Irvine.

He released his first LP "Browne Sugar" in 1979 which contained a cover of Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway hit, "The Closer I Get To You" and disco oriented jazz funk.

His second LP, "Love Approach" released in 1980 was his breakout hit album that contained "Funkin' For Jamaica (N.Y.)" a #1 R&B hit for four weeks. Surprisingly, the song totally missed the Hot100 probably due to the disco backlash and was not promoted.

He decided to name a jam he had done "Funkin' For Jamaica" while he was at his parents home and wrote the bass line. He handed that to Bernard Wright, a jazz keyboardist and the son of Roberta Flack. He loved what he heard and got right into the groove and laid down some awesome synth tracks, with Dave Grusin on piano, Marcus Miller on bass, Bobby Broom on guitar, Buddy Williams on drums and Crusher Bennett on percussion in a jam session that really got cookin!

The final piece of this puzzle was vocalist Toni Smith, whose vibrant vocals resembled Chaka Khan which led to a lot of confusion when record buyers asked for "the new Chaka Khan" tune. To give the song more energy, the group developed a rap and it included the party sounds of many of their neighbors in Jamaica.

Hit singles have eluded him since then, but he built a strong jazz following that saw him release an album a year up to 1984, then sporadically with the most recent waxing, "S'up" in 2010. While the Hot100 ignored him, he got the last laugh as "Funkin' For Jamaica" has become a touchstone and a staple of house parties and dance DJ's around the world all the way to today that prove its universal appeal and influence. It's a happy party song, funky but firmly planted in jazz, just like the residents of Jamaica, NY.