Gregory Isaacs don’t wanna see no doc

PHOTO by LUKE MCGARRY

Gregory Isaacs got famous when he got lovesick, and his song “Night Nurse” (“I don’t wanna see no doc/I need attendance from my nurse around the clock . . . ”) used the sad-boy sentiment Isaacs could express the best—the baby-please school of soul entreaty—for probably the biggest hit he ever had, a characteristic lovers-rock song (with support band the Roots Radics) destined to be comped forever on every reggae collection with a smiling girl on the cover. But Isaacs already had a kingly career by 1982’s “Nurse,” stacking up a barrel of early roots 45s (some on his own African Museum label) and a few full-lengths that would point him toward richer major-label fortunes and even land him on Johnny Rotten’s one-of-a-kind list of legit reggae artists, under a category Rotten called “The Goods.” Isaacs then had a voice so delicate it almost floated—like Sam Cooke, he’d range from hopeful to shattered within the slimmest instant, tightening his songs around a precise half-sigh (“Lo-o-nely man . . . ” from the song of the same name) or instead he’d ride a determined orchestral crescendo (“I deserve the right . . .  to be . . . like any other man!”) like Marvin Gaye, whose Motown mix of love and politics echoed Isaacs’ own favorite themes. (“Going to school,” Isaacs told one interviewer, “I read a lot of books and sang a lot of love songs.”) Love and hurt as much as love and happiness: At his best, Isaacs found rare subtlety in his idea of romance, coloring even his most adorable songs with intimations of sorrows past or worse sorrows awaiting. And he became one of the best-noted of Jamaica’s heartbroke soul singers because he found more to sing about in love than maybe the man in the next isolation booth over, and because he could make the word “lonely” as profound as the phrase “what’s going on?

GREGORY ISAACS WITH SLY AND ROBBIE, THE AGGROLITES, BEENIE MAN, CAPLETON AND MANY MORE AT THE RAGGAMUFFINS FESTIVAL | LONG BEACH ARENA | 300 E OCEAN BLVD | LONG BEACH 90802  562.436.3636 | SAT-SUN NOON | $39-55 | ALL AGES  VISIT RAGGAMUFFINSFESTIVAL.COM FOR COMPLETE LINE-UP AND MORE INFORMATION  GREGORY ISAACS PLAYS SUN

Tags: gregory isaacs, Long Beach, Music, ragga muffin festival, reggae