Stephen "Cat" Coore, the guitarist and co-founder of Third World, died on January 18, 2026. Jamaica lost one of its most consequential musicians—a classically trained virtuoso who spent fifty years proving that reggae could hold multitudes.
Coore was born in Kingston in 1956 to a politically connected family; his mother was a music teacher who gave him early access to instruments most Jamaican children never touched. He won a silver medal playing cello at the Jamaica Festival when he was ten. By thirteen, he'd already joined Inner Circle as lead guitarist. At seventeen, he co-founded Third World with Colin Leslie and Michael "Ibo" Cooper—a band that would spend the next five decades reshaping what reggae could sound like.
A Sound That Traveled
Third World's 1976 debut landed them on the bill at the "Smile Jamaica" concert headlined by Bob Marley that same year. Hits followed quickly: "96° in the Shade" in 1977, "Now That We've Found Love" in 1978. The songs moved across radio formats that usually stayed separate—soul, funk, rock, classical elements woven into reggae's backbone. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, they were sharing festival stages with Stevie Wonder and Rita Marley, earning nine Grammy nominations along the way.
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Start Your News DetoxWhat made Coore distinctive wasn't just technical skill—plenty of musicians could play cello or guitar competently. It was his refusal to treat genres as sealed boxes. He could move from a classical cello solo to a reggae anthem without apology or awkwardness, as if the instruments had always belonged in the same room. Jamaican author Barbara Blake Hannah described watching him perform as hypnotic. Columnist Gordon Robinson called him the inspiration behind "Jamaica's finest show band."
The Jamaican government recognized this in 2005, awarding him the Order of Distinction. Prime Minister Andrew Holness called him "a towering figure in our cultural history and one of the architects of Jamaica's global musical legacy." Culture Minister Olivia "Babsy" Grange described him as "a unique talent and a true Reggae Ambassador."
Coore is survived by his wife Donna Feltis-Coore and four children. Third World's catalogue—the songs that traveled from Kingston to concert halls worldwide—remains the clearest measure of what he built.
