DIGNITARIES AND family gathered at the Tony Thwaites Wing of the University Hospital of the West Indies yesterday to witness veteran bandleader Byron Lee receive the Order of Jamaica (OJ), Jamaica's fourth highest civic honour.

The 73-year-old Lee, known as the Dragon, received the award from Governor General Sir Kenneth Hall who cited his 'contribution to the development of Jamaican music'.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding, Minister of Information Olivia Grange and Lee's wife Sheila observed the event.

Insisted on being home

Julianne Lee-Samuels, the fifth of Lee's six children, said her father insisted on being brought home to accept the award. He had been in Miami receiving treatment for transitional cell cancer at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital.

"He's fully aware, fully alert and has been vigorously fighting," Lee-Samuels told The Gleaner. Lee was diagnosed with bladder cancer two years ago.

In a separate ceremony yesterday, Lee was presented with the Knight of St George's medal by Father Frank Ryan, his football coach at St George's College.

It was at St George's College in the early 1950s that Lee started the Dragonaires band which recorded several calypso hits including 1959's Dumplings which was produced by Edward Seaga.

During the early 1960s the band hit it big with Jamaican Ska, a homage to the jazz-inspired beat that was the local rage. That decade saw him starting Dynamic Sounds, which became a leading distributor in the Caribbean for major American music companies including Atlantic Records and Columbia Records.

Record for big-name acts

Dynamic also became the place to record for big-name acts like the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon. The 'Stones' cut their 1973 album, Goat Head Soup there while Simon recorded his international hit song Mother and Child Reunion at Dynamic the previous year.

Like his contemporary, The Mighty Sparrow of Trinidad and Tobago, Lee embraced the uptempo soca beat which emerged in the Eastern Caribbean during the late 1970s. The Dragonaires had hits in that genre with Give Me Soca and Tiney Winey.

In 1990, Lee's ambition to stage a mass soca festival in Jamaica was realised with the inaugural Jamaica Carnival which celebrates its 20th anniversary next year.

Two years ago, Lee released Music That Memories are Made Of, a five-disc set of the Dragonaires' work.