Cat Coore: a consummate musician Andrew Clunis, Freelance Writer GUITARIST Stephen 'Cat' Coore is not the average Jamaican musician. Not that he hasn't mastered the craft, but in terms of academic qualifications, he's leaps and bounds above most others. Coore had to be. At age six his mother ensured that he took an interest in music and endeavoured to have him play the piano. He got early formal training at the hands of Noel Foster Davis and Pam Gorman. "My mother got interested in listening to a lot of classical music. I liked the cello and that's what I first started learning to play. "I went through school and did the various levels of music training for which I would be tested by the Royal College of Music and Trinity College. They would come to the Caribbean and administer the exams. At age 14 when I was getting ready to do my 'O'levels I stopped having interest in classical music. Coore had been attending Priory High School and was being influenced by a wide variety of music forms. "Many American children used to attend there and I got exposed to rock music. I was quite turned on by pop music as the Beatles was happening at the time, while in Jamaica we had Coxsone playing a variety of music and there were juke boxes all over town. I had a toss up between doing pop and classical and I chose pop," he told Showbiz. Inner Circle By age 13 in 1969, he had become a member of Inner Circle. He also used to hang around Tomorrow's Children and the Vikings band. "Most people in Inner Circle were like five years older than I was and I learnt from them. I had an advantage because I was able to play and work out chords, so I was competent, but I needed to learn about being a musician, the sacrifices necessary," he continued. Inner Circle was the outfit that pulled him fulltime into pop music. "There were lots of good musicians playing with Inner Circle. There was Douglas Guthrie on sax and Ibo was keyboard player and band leader. Funky Brown, Prilly Hamilton, Bruce Ruffin and Bunny Rugs were lead singers at different times," Coore said. At 16 he began to be influenced by early Bob Marley music. "That was when I got interested in writing my own stuff and my whole musical experience began to blossom," he said. Coore got the idea to form a group and he thought about a three-piece outfit. "At the time there were a lot of three-piece bands in America. There was the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Police came out with band that was playing funk-reggae. "I got Colin Leslie to play bass, Carl Barovier to play drums and I would play guitar. Ibo saw what we were doing and said, 'Hey, don't leave me out of that.' He added the keyboards. "He was a grade 8 musician and I was at grade six. Prilly Hamilton had come over from Inner Circle just before Ibo. Colin Leslie played with the group until it got a name, because he was pursuing a career in accounting. He decided to concentrate more on the management side and Richie Daley came in. All of these happened in quick sequence," he said. Prominence Clancy Eccles named the group Suns of Third World as the term had gained prominence in the description of developing and under-developed countries. "We later dropped Suns of and simply called ourselves Third World," he explained. The Third World idea was struck in 1973, but didn't happen until 1974. They were assisted in management and the procurement of instruments by Darren Green, a Jamaican living in Washington who is now a professor at Howard University. Coore's entire musical life has been spent as a member of the Grammy-nominated group. Looking at today's music, he identifies a lack of structure. "I don't see anything happening in this era which has the kind of foundation of how the bands of those days started," he said. Coore's career has taken him among some of the music industry's heavyweights around the world. He has worked with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, the world's foremost songwriting duo who had more than 100 gold records to their credit; Cindy Lauper; Sly and Robbie; Stevie Wonder who produced their big hit Try Jah Love and Playing Us Too Close. "It was really fantastic working with Stevie, being in his own studio and just benefitting from his great talent and experience," Coore said. In addition to the guitar, Coore plays bass, cello and harmonica and he does vocals as well