by Howard Campbell
[KINGSTON, Jamaica] – Multi-instrumentalist Mikey Chung, who played on hit songs by Peter Tosh, Dennis Brown, Ernie Smith and Black Uhuru, died in Kingston on December 28. He was 71 years-old.
Chung’s brother, Charlie, said he died at the University Hospital of the West Indies. He had suffered from cancer and renal failure.
The second of five sons born to a Chinese-Jamaican family, Chung was raised in east Kingston. He and his younger brother Geoffrey, produced and played on some of the most creative songs of the 1970s including Silhouettes and Wichita Lineman by Dennis Brown; I Man A Grasshopper by Pablo Moses; Life is Just For Living by Ernie Smith and Breakfast in Bed by Lorna Bennett.
Geoffrey was also a versatile musician. Like Mikey, he played bass, guitar and keyboards; one of the leading reggae producers of the 1970s and 1980s, he died in 1995.
Mikey Chung toured and recorded with Peter Tosh’s Word Sound And Power Band during the 1980s. He was also a member of Sly and Robbie’s Taxi Gang, playing guitar on songs like Dennis Brown’s Have You Ever Been in Love and Black Uhuru’s Party in Session.
Chung is the latest stalwart Jamaican artist/musician to die in 2021. He was preceded by Bunny Wailer, U Roy, Lee “Scratch” Perry, drummer Mikey “Boo” Richards, his colleague in the Now Generation Band; and bassist Robbie Shakespeare of Sly and Robbie fame.
