- Love ForeverLove Forever, a Jamaican ballad that bucked the grain on the cusp of the roots reggae flood of the early 1970s, has proven that a good love song plays eternally.
It was not, of course, unusual to have a ballad hit in the land of, up to that time, mento, ska, rocksteady and reggae, and a gathering tide of deejay music. After all, the listening public cut its teeth and many a rug to American rhythm and blues from radio and sound system alike, with local performing groups copying the three-part harmony format.
But this was just not any ballad. It was written by a musical genius for a very special voice.
Winston 'Merritone' Blake, widower of Cynthia Schloss, told The Sunday Gleaner that "When Harold carried the record to us we were living in Barbican. He said he had this record and he wrote it for Cynthia's voice. I said play it let me hear it."
He did, Butler having sung on the demo recording himself. Blake laughs as he recalls that Harold Butler's singing was not very good. His musical and lyrical ability were, however, beyond question.
When Cynthia Schloss heard the song she, too, said it was good. When it was recorded, though, Winston Blake was not in the studio. And Cynthia Schloss' response when he asked her how the recording session went was 'soup'.
It was done in one take. No do overs. No corrections.
Apparently, none were needed, as Love Forever has remained a standard more than 30 years after it was recorded. Blake remembers that it charted as a single, although he cannot recall if it went to number one. What he is sure of, though, is that "it was a number one requested song".
never left radio
"Love Forever definitely has never come off radio. When it came out, Cynthia got a lot of jobs to sing at weddings and anniversaries," he said.
For both singer and writer/composer, it was a landmark. "It was the platform that launched Cynthia as a household name. It did catapult Harold Butler into the spotlight, both as a writer and a player of instruments. He went on to do One Step Ahead with Beres Hammond and Let True Love Begin with Ernest Wilson.
Love Forever is deceptively simple and, true to Butler's word, it was written specifically for Schloss' voice.
"The more I listen to it the more I realise how talented that lady was. When you hear how simply she took the notes and the register you realise it. I have heard many attempt it, but it remains her song," Blake said.
"It was really made for her. It sounds simple, but most singers who sing it will find it is not easy in the key she sang it in. She sang it effortlessly. She loved singing ballads more than anything else."
Among the others that Cynthia Schloss did were Surround Me With Love and You Look Like Love.
And Winston Blake has expectations that Love Forever will find another lease on a larger life. "It is waiting for something international to happen to it. They loved it in Holland, places like England. She did Belize and quite a few places in the Caribbean," Blake said.
"It think it will outlive the writer and it has outlived the singer."
