
Reminiscing An Icon: ‘Cardinal’ Rex Jim Lawson (1935-1971)
Among the musicians that dominated the music scene in Nigeria in the 1960s, the late Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson is believed to be the most outstanding. In his time, his contemporaries could not match the touch he added to highlife, a music genre that morphed from the foxtrot and calypso with Ghanaian rhythms known only among the local African aristocracy in the mid-19th century to dance and guitar bands that all classes of the society could relate to.
Rex Lawson was in his 20s when he became a household name in Nigeria. He was an emotional and philosophical singer who …