He spent over 10 years in the military, despite his admission to a problem with authority. “Me always a get inna trouble man, but them still keep me.”

Enforced discipline may not have borne fruit, but Derrick Hinds’ army stints did leave one very important legacy, or more specifically to polish it: music.

Hinds grew up in Trench Town, and thus was surrounded by music of all types, but the first thing he remembers really having a hold on him was the haunting yet breezy sound of the Skatalites and in particular, troubled trombone genius, Don Drummond.

“Me hear tune like Java and Guns of Navarone and that really get me hook, you know,” he reminisces. Though he resolved on a career in music, the demands of survival and the vagaries of life pushed him into the workforce. Hinds worked with Pan Am airways before joining the Defence Force and the Jamaica Military Band. he would later spend time in the UK Royal Military Academy of Music, where he learned composition, scoring and other musical techniques.

But in between those military stints was regular working gigs as a “bandsman”. He was part of a band called Conscious Minds, then joined Soul Syndicate, one Jamaica’s most storied show bands.

He has the distinction on playing on the classic Jamaican hit My Jamaican Girl. “From the time we lay down th track everybody know that’s a hit,” Hinds recalls “From it touch the road, the people latch on to it and never let it go.”

That fortune would later repeat itself when Hinds got the call to play on another classic, the Tamlins cover of Randy Newman’s Baltimore (Newman, for TV fans, is also the composer of the theme for the hit cable series Monk). Interestingly, reports are that the group and producers Sly & Robbie were not so much moved by the original, but by a cover version done by no less than Nina Simone (who herself reportedly disdained the version as “filler”). Hinds has also graced the stage of the biggest sporting spectacle, the Super Bowl, having been part of the band that played the famed half Time Show during Super Bowl XXIII in Miami in 1979.

For the last several year, Hinds has been based in the US, but he has a burning desire to resettle in Jamaica and share his knowledge with the present generation of aspiring musicians. He also has a new CD, Message Man, to promote, one which he is proud to say boasts only live instrumentation. “Everything we do is the real organic sound, no drum track, no machine,” he says.

If he has his way, Hinds could well find himself at the command of a new generation of Jamaican hornsmen and performers. It’s a dream worth fighting for.