Thirty-two years is a long time to release a video for a hit song, but as the saying goes, ‘nothing happens before its time. In July, a visual for Dwisdom’s ‘My First Real Love’ hit the market, three months after it was filmed in South Florida.
Directed and produced by Steve HoSang for Digital 1 Media Service, the video had the full involvement of Willie Stewart, who co-produced the song in 1991 with his younger brother Pablo.
Stewart, who co-wrote the R&B ballad with Dwisdom, Neville Hines and Ian Hird, said the song remains popular three decades later. “I know the song still has the magic today as it had the first day it was released because everyone who hears it for the first time falls in love with it,” he stated.
The video was released just as Dwisdom went on tour as a member of Beres Hammond’s Harmony House Singers. She has been part of the lover’s rock king’s recording and touring setup for over 20 years.
Dwisdom was a teenager when she met Pablo Stewart, who was a member of Kotch, a reggae band that scored a hit single in the 1980s with ‘Jean’. Her vocals impressed him, and he introduced her to Willie, best known as drummer for reggae band Third World.
“He believed in her talent and when we recorded the song and I heard her voice I understood why. Pablo and I had a gut feeling it would do well but never to the massive hit it became in the hearts of our Jamaican people,” said Stewart.
‘My First Real Love’ was number one in Jamaica for several weeks. Because of its pop sound, many fans believed Dwisdom — who is from Portmore in Jamaica — was American.
Willie Stewart lives in South Florida where he teaches drumming in the Broward County school system. Pablo Stewart died in 2002.