Paul Dawkins, the artist grew up in Neasden, Brent as the 2nd eldest in a family of 7 sisters and 1 brother. His musical journey began playing along to Ready Steady Go using a broom stick and a belt as his bass guitar. As a church going family, he, Tony Gadd and his cousin George Oban (who was the founder of Aswad) soon formed a band.

With a love for the bass guitar, he built his first guitar in school and taught himself how to play. In around 1972/3 Bob Marley came to Neasden and Delroy Washington took this artist to Bob Marleys house where he would sit down and play music with him. Seeing his natural ability, the bass player Family Man started to give him some lessons.

His musical career kicked off when he was just 15 playing bass for Junior English. He has, in fact, been a member of several bands:

He joined Tradition and the band was signed to Venture Records. They built a reputation through their live performances, backing singers such as Alton Ellis, Delroy Wilson, Honey Boy, and Culture. The group became extremely successful and in 1978 won an award from Echoes for the best Single “Breezin”

This artist formed the Heptics with Angus Gaye, C Lashley and Paul Thompson and on D-Roy Records they released “Little Girl” and “Natural Woman”. He recorded for Arawak Records and released “Ready to Dance” and ”To Love Someone”

It was for Starlight Records where he and the Heptics recorded “Come My Baby” and “Spend Some Time” and you will be surprised to know that Jean Adebambo recorded some backing vocals on one of his tracks.

It is also worth noting that this artist wrote songs as he sang them and hardly wrote any lyrics down on pen and paper. In fact Natural Woman and To Love Someone were just two of the tracks recorded in one take with no written lyrics.

In 1987 on Monday 1st June “Love Is” by Four in a Row was released. The group consisted of this prolific song writer along with Dennis Pinnock, Keith Douglas and Tex Johnson

In addition to the previously mentioned tracks, this artists has written and sung too many tracks to mention and has even toured with the Boomtown Rats and Showaddywaddy.

Can you believe Paul has been in the music industry for over 50 years and has only just started writing songs by putting pen to paper during the lockdown when he wrote 16/17 songs.

Paul Dawkins was presented with the “Male Legend 2024 Award”