Ken Boothe, singer
I was staying with a friend in Canada. He played me Andy Williams’s version of Everything I Own, and said: “Ken, when you get back home to Jamaica, make sure you do this song.” In those days, you needed 10 or more songs to complete an album. So in 1974, when we were in Federal studios in Kingston searching for a 10th song, I remembered Everything I Own.
The producer wasn’t keen because he liked to keep control and suggest the songs, but when I started singing “You sheltered me from harm …” everyone’s eyes lit up. At the time, there was a lot of violence in Jamaica, so the words meant something to us. The studio owner came in and said: “If that song isn’t a hit, I’m going to sell the whole studio complex.”
I loved the song so much and wanted to bring something to it that people would remember, so I reached inside myself for the vocal. It became a Jamaican No 1 and the Trojan label picked it up for the UK. I was at home when the postman brought a telegram telling me the BBC wanted me on Top of the Pops.
I didn’t have time to go to London because I was playing shows, and we didn’t have a video, so the BBC put a guy at a window with a shadow covering his face, miming to the song – everybody thought it was me. A couple of weeks later I did Top of the Pops for real. I was on the programme 14 times in all with this song and its follow-up Crying Over You, appearing alongside people like Elton John and Hot Chocolate. When the song became a British No 1, Bob Marley called to congratulate me. There were a lot of Jamaican songs in the British charts in that period. It was a happy time for reggae.
After it was a hit, I found out that Trojan were going bankrupt. I flew to London and there was nobody in the office, just record covers strewn everywhere. I hadn’t received my royalties and my career went down the drain for a while – I lost everything I own, just like in the song, but I never gave up on music. I’ve done a lot of songs but I’m always very grateful to David Gates, who wrote it. I’ve just done a new acoustic version for the film Inna De Yard. Today, whenever I sing it live, the entire audience sings it with me.