When staff at Bellevue Hospital discovered the dead body of Don Drummond on May 6, 1969, it marked the end of a life punctuated by spurts of genius and tragedy. Fifty-five years later, the gifted trombonist/composer remains a romantic figure.

Drummond was committed to the asylum after murdering his lover, Anita “Margarita” Mahfood, on New Year’s Day, 1965. He was sent there after a brief incarceration at the General Penitentiary in Central Kingston.

A past student of the Alpha Boys School, Drummond learned the rudiments of music at that institution along with saxophonists Tommy McCook and Lester Sterling, and trumpeter Johnny “Dizzy” Moore, his future colleagues in The Skatalites, an all-star band that formed in 1964.

Just 36 years-old when he died, Drummond is hailed by musicologists for his talent as a composer. He wrote Eastern Standard Time, Occupation and Confucius, masterpieces of the ska idiom. Those songs caught the attention of a young Lennie Little-White who lived in East Kingston during the early 1960s.

“My first recollection of Don Drummond was as a teenager who would sneak into Club Havana on Windward Road to watch and listen to him play in between the Latin cabaret dancing ladies.

“He cut a dash with his Fedora hat and a yellow ‘chamois’ cloth that dangled between his fingers as he played his trombone,” Little-White recalled in an interview with Observer Online.

A film-maker best known for the movie Children of Babylon and the Royal Palm Estate television series, Little-White has longed to make a movie about Drummond. Most of the musician’s early life remains a mystery, with popular lore suggesting his impoverished mother took him to Alpha as a child.

“The idea for a movie on his life came to me after I returned to Jamaica in the ‘70’s. Beyond his musical artistry, l was arrested by the Romeo and Juliet story of Don and Margarita. Their torrid love affair and his hot music were ready elements for a magical tell-all story,” he said. “I actually commissioned (musicologist) Garth White to do the preliminary research. I dropped the project when one overly-ambitious lady attacked me with a claim that she had all rights to Don Drummond’s biography.”

There are varying stories about why Drummond killed Margarita, a member of the wealthy Mahfood family, whose roots are in Lebanon. Some say it was spurred by jealousy, others contend that his violent outburst came after he forgot to take his medication.

Margarita died from multiple stab wounds to the chest in an East Kingston tenement. Drummond was found guilty of her murder one year later.

Drummond’s genius has been hailed in recent years.

In 2013, the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) mounted Malungu, a ballet, as a tribute to him. That year saw the release of Don Drummond: The Genius and Tragedy of the World’s Greatest Trombonist, a book by American Heather Augustyn.

The foreword to that tome was written by American trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis, a member of the famed jazz family and an admirer of Drummond’s work.

Lennie Little-White insists a biopic about Drummond is critical. He argues that it would help a new generation of Jamaicans to respect ‘foundation’ artistes and musicians.

“Don Drummond remains at the pinnacle of the pantheons who gifted Jamaica and the world with the ska foundation of what is now reggae. As a people, it is time we start learning more about the icons who planted the seeds that gave us the likes of Jimmy Cliff, Bob Marley and Toots Hibbert, among many others,” he said.