IN 1982, reggae’s Crown Prince Dennis Brown scored what was probably his biggest hit on the Billboard charts.
He reached number 42 on Billboard’s Black Singles chart (now known as the R&B Hip Hop Songs chart) with the lovers’ rock ballad Love Has Found Its Way.
The album of the same name got as far as number 35 on the Black Albums chart (now known as the R&B Hip Hop Albums chart).
Released by the US-based A&M Records (a label founded by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss in 1962), Love Has Found Its Way was produced by Joe Gibbs and Willie Lindo.
According to Lindo, the title song almost never made it on the project.
“We had already finished the album — in fact, we were actually in the process of mixing it when Dennis stopped by one day at the studio and said ‘Mr Lindo, mi know the album done, but mi waan you hear da song yah’… We recorded it and the rest is history,” Lindo told the Observer from his Florida base on Friday.
Among the musicians who worked on the album were Dean Fraser, Sly Dunbar, Lloyd Parks, and Val Douglas. Pam Hall and Cynthia Schloss contributed background vocals.
The 10-track album featured songs including Love Has Found Its Way, I Can’t Stand Losing You, Why Baby Why, Get Up, Get High on Love, Weep and Moan, Handwriting on the Wall, Blood Sweat and Tears, Half Way Up, Half Way Down, and Any Day Now.
The title track, Love Has Found Its Way, has become a lovers’ rock anthem. Not only did it give Brown his biggest hit Stateside, it topped the charts in Jamaica and reached number 47 on the UK pop chart in July 1982, wher it spent six weeks on the UK chart.
Brown died in July 1999. He was 42.
