White Mice still feels True Love
The Jamaica Observer’s Entertainment Desk continues with the 25th in its series during Child Month highlighting some of Jamaica’s young performers who shot to stardom.
Hardcore dancehall fans never tire of hearing White Mice’s True Love. It’s one of those songs that gets the revered gun salute.
Released in 1987 on the ubiquitous Far East rhythm, True Love remains White Mice’s signature. It’s what fans want to hear whenever he performs.
The singer, who turned 50 last October, still records and performs in Europe and the Caribbean. Because he has a club/sound system base in Europe, many of White Mice’s current songs are done for independent companies on that continent.
But the Rastafarian artiste admits wherever he goes, fans want to hear songs that made him a teenaged star.
“Wi do some great works as a youth, yuh nuh, so people out dey still love hear dem. Sound system inna Europe still want dub plate wid song like True Love an’ Youths of Today,” he said.
Liveth and We A Blood are among White Mice’s recent songs. Released in Europe, they are produced by Swedish and French companies, respectively, and geared towards a particular market.
“There’s a big vinyl market inna Europe, dem call it black gold. Is like everybody over dey have a turntable,” he explained.
White Mice was born Alan Crichton in Montego Bay. He first recorded at age 14 for hometown producer Neville Thomas but his debut song, Dolly Stylee, did little and he moved to Kingston.
There, he became a member of Sugar Minott’s Youthman Promotions camp where his colleagues included Yami Bolo, another teenaged singer.
White Mice had only one released song (No Competition) for Minott, which failed to make a mark. He had a change in fortunes with his brother, producer Blemo Crichton, who assembled an outstanding cast of musicians at King Jammy’s studio in Waterhouse to record True Love.
“Wi have people like Steely an’ Clevie, (guitarist) China Smith, (bassist) Chris Meredith an’ (drummer) Squiddly Cole work pon dem song dey. Yuh can si why people still love dem,” he said.
