Stranger Cole, reggae pioneer behind Bangarang, dies at 83

Stranger Cole, the voice behind Bangarang and one of the musicians who helped turn Jamaican popular music toward reggae, died on June 11 at 83. For reggae fans, the loss lands hard because Cole was not just a singer with a deep catalogue. He was part of the original wiring of the music itself.

Born Wilburn Theodore Cole in Kingston, Jamaica, on June 26, 1942, he first drew attention as a songwriter with In and Out the Window for Eric Monty Morris. That early success came as American rhythm and blues still dominated Jamaican sound systems, and Cole’s ear was shaped by voices like Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke. He was building his career right in the middle of the island’s great musical shift, when ska, rocksteady and reggae were still defining themselves in real time.

His own recording career took off in 1962 with producer Arthur ‘Duke’ Reid, and the records that followed made his name familiar across the island. Rough and Tough and When You Call My Name established him as a dependable presence in the studio, while his work with Duke Reid, Coxsone Dodd, Prince Buster, Bunny Lee, Lee Perry and Sonia Pottinger placed him close to the center of Jamaican music’s evolution. He also recorded with Lester Sterling, another link to the era when the music was still mutating from one pulse into the next.

Bangarang, recorded in 1968, became the song most closely tied to Cole’s legacy. It is often cited as one of the earliest true reggae records, and Cole himself said in 2023 that it was the first reggae song ever recorded. That claim has followed him for years because Bangarang captured a new rhythm and feel that listeners still hear as the bridge between the ska years and the reggae era that followed.

Cole’s influence did not stop at the microphone. He emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1971 and later moved to Toronto in 1973, where he worked as a machinist at the Tonka Toy factory before opening Roots Records at 58 Kensington in 1978. The shop was described as the first Caribbean business in Kensington Market, turning Cole into a cultural anchor for the diaspora as well as a keeper of the music’s memory.

That is why his death matters now. Stranger Cole leaves behind more than one classic song title or one disputed first. He leaves a paper trail of Jamaican music as it was being invented, and Bangarang still sounds like the moment the island’s story changed speed.