The Pioneers tickets and 2024 tour dates

Biography

The Pioneers are a Jamaican reggae vocal trio, whose main period of success was in the 1960s. The trio has had different line-ups, and still occasionally performs.

The Pioneers were formed in 1962 by brothers Sydney and Derrick Crooks, and their friend Winston Hewitt. Their early recordings "Good Nanny" and "I'll Never Come Running Back to You" were self-produced at the Treasure Isle studio using money lent to the Crooks brothers by their mother and appeared on Ken Lack's Caltone label.

Several other singles followed, none of them hits, before Hewitt immigrated to Canada in 1966. Hewitt was replaced for around a year by former Heptone Glen Adams.

The Pioneers' early singles were not successful, and Sydney began promoting concerts, while Derrick took up a job with the Alcoa bauxite company. The group broke up in mid-1967.

Sydney began working at Joe Gibbs' record shop, and through Gibbs, returned to recording. At his first session (to record "Give Me Little Loving"), with the other members of The Pioneers gone, Crooks recruited Jackie Robinson, who he found outside the studio just before recording began. Crooks later said of the encounter:

"When I was about to voice the song I looked outside the studio and I saw a little boy sitting on a stone. I said 'Hey, come here man, you can sing?' He sang the harmony for 'Give Me Little Loving' and his name was Jackie Robinson. After that I said to him 'You are one of the Pioneers from today' and he became the lead singer of the Pioneers".