Cactus Nightclub was started by convicted Jamaican gangster Vivian Blake, co-founder of the Shower Posse gang that operated in the streets of Kingston, Miami and New York during the 1980s.
He founded the legendary club during the early 1990s in Portmore, Jamaica after escaping “Operation Rum Punch II” in 1988, when the US authorities cracked down on 219 Jamaican members of the gang from 20 cities for their involvement in transatlantic racketeering, marijuana, and cocaine distribution from Kingston to New York, Houston to Miami, Los Angeles, and Alaska.
FBI investigators and a Federal Grand Jury accused Blake of being the leader of an organization that killed more than 1,400 people in drug-related shootings on 37 counts of racketeering and conspiracy.
In his memoir, “Shower Posse: Blake stated that he managed to escape the dragnet by slipping back into Jamaica via a cruise ship in Ocho Rios, while he was listed as America’s most wanted, and reinvented himself as an astute businessman renting Jet Skis and bikes, going by the name Andrew Williams.
Blake was eventually arrested in Jamaica 30 years ago in January 1994 on an extradition warrant, to face the racketeering indictment in the US. Before his arrest, and the ensuing six years that he fought the extradition however, he started and ran the legendary Dancehall Nightclub on the premise of showcasing Jamaican culture through fashion and dance.
“I opened the club they call The Cactus,” Blake told Boomshots in a 2009 interview. The drug Kingpin who said he was supposed to promote Bob Marley concerts in the US before Marley died also said he want to be known for more than street crimes, “I want to be known—not as a gangster. I want to be known as a writer, an artist. A different life.”
He explained his version of the genesis of Cactus and the players that made it possible, saying, “Yeah. What I did was I had a show with the Stush models, right? I kept a show at the club with them top models. But the crowd was lukewarm. I expected a bigger turnout than that. So like I met a dancehall girl—which you know as Dancehall Queen Carlene.”
Radio broadcaster Dennis Howard recalls the night Cactus Night Club was opened and how much of an impact the club had immediately on the dancehall culture.
“I was the top afternoon radio jock in Jamaica on Irie FM at the time,” Howard bragged. “Beating both Barry G and Winston Williams, who were on RJR and JBC Radio 1, respectively. So I played at various clubs islandwide, including residencies at the Acropolis, Silks Nightclub, and Springvale Nightclub. So it was natural to have me open the club. After the opening, I was the featured DJ on Saturdays,” he recalled.
Howard said he ushered in the nightclub happenings on radio programs on Jamaica’s biggest radio stations and broadcasted live the opening of the seminal dancehall night spot.
“The music of the club itself was not transmitted on air in those days. That happened when I introduced it at JBC Radio One when I left Irie FM and returned to JBC. It was easy to transmit then as the popular songs were relatively clean back then,” he explained.
Many people were not aware of who Blake was at the time or were privy to his notoriety in the US, but Howard said he knew about the man, the myth, and the legend even though he went by another name.
“I was aware of who he was; this is Jamaica! There are no secrets, and he used to visit the Acropolis when I played there on Fridays as he had a business in Ocho Rios, but he was very professional and humble. People came to the party. They did not even know who he was,” Howard recalled.
Some of dancehall’s biggest stars got their break at the club, performing hits of the ’90s during a period when dancehall dominated both in Jamaica and the US, reaching the top of the Billboard charts.
It was at Cactus that 25-year-old Stacy Greenberg from Capitol Records met Spragga Benz, signing him as her first artist to the label then released his sophomore album, ‘Uncommonly Smooth,’ in 1995. This was a time when even Jay-Z had a hard time getting a record deal in the US.
“Every artist and up-and-coming at the time made an appearance; I emceed a few events and was a judge for competitions over the years. Memorable moments: Uptown vs Downtown Fashion, the wet t-shirt competitions, and the Friday after-work Jam were epic. Dennis Brown, Delroy Wilson live, and the first dancehall artist to perform Spragga Benz. The Dancehall Queen competition originated at Cactus Nightclub,” Howard recalls.
The club opening night had sparse crowd on December 13, 1991. Then, with one event, things changed and ushered in a new era of dancehall glam and spotlight on the Dancehall Queen.
Jamaican socialite Carlene Smith became the Dancehall Queen Competition’s first winner, and she played an integral role in convincing Blake to include the event as part of the club’s offerings to attract attention.
“It was the brainchild of Vivian, who had struck up a relationship with Carlene, and after a successful run there, it was taken on the road to the various parishes,” Howard said about the model and dance contest.
Carlene recalls to WMV the series of events that led her to meet Blake and subsequently become the competition winner. “My sister, God rest her soul, she used to date Tiga, so she used to take me everywhere, and I kept seeing the reactions I would get from people. I later met a man called Andrew Williams, later on learned he was Vivian Blake who owned Cactus nightclub and he invited me to a fashion show to watch,” she said.
Unlike Howard Smith said she didn’t know Blake’s real identity. She said, “I didn’t know he was Vivian Blake then because he was called Andrew Williams; he owned Cactus nightclub. So when he invited me and my friends, ten people were in this brand new club, so I went to him and said I have an idea for something that will work, and he said tell me. I said let’s do a fashion clash ‘Uptown vs Dancehall.’ He said it’s a good idea; he will do it. I told him how I wanted it to be done, and he had L’Antoinette Stines do a choreography well put together, and we had the clash ‘Uptown Vs Dancehall.'”
Miss Jamaica World 1990 Erica Aquart, who was the bride in the 1989 movie The Mighty Quinn, starring Denzel Washington was also part of the competition, but Carlene was declared the winner due to her high-color and relatable fashion sense and expressive personality, which crossed social lines between uptown and downtown Jamaica.
“They asked me, ‘so weh you call yourself,’ and so I said, she (Erica Aquart) is Miss Jamaica Beauty Queen, so I am the Dancehall Queen, and that’s how the title came to me to be ‘Dancehall Queen.’ We took it around the island, and they took Erica Aquart out of it, and there were other uptown models, but we would present our way by dancing,” Carlene recalled.
At the time, only 18 years old, Carlene, who later had a child with King Of The Dancehall Beenie Man, said it was only after Blake was arrested that she put the pieces of the puzzle together and understood his infamy. “He was called Andrew Williams, and it’s way after when he was arrested I saw his picture and said, that’s Andrew, my boss, no it wasn’t, it was the infamous Vivian Blake,” she said. Adding, “I knew nothing of that; I was young, I was in my late teens, I knew nothing of Vivian Blake, I learned the stories after, relating to who he was for me and who he really was.”
The Dancehall Queen Competition and Carlene had a significant impact on Jamaican culture at the time. “Along with the rest of the Dancehall Queen crew,” Howard said. In terms of fashion and urban lifestyles, it pushed the envelope of what is acceptable, and he said Blake’s criminal underworld identity did not affect the club in any tangible way.
‘Andrew Williams’ sold the Club to Night Time Promotions (owned and operated by Chris Cargill, Ribbie Chung, and Earl Samuels.) He said he cashed out after his real name Vivian Blake hit the newspapers and before his arrest in 1994. Vivian was eventually extradited in 1999, after that, several dance moves and music trends evolved out of the space until 2001 when the club closed its doors making way for the popularity Asylum night club on Knustford Boulevard in New Kingston.
“The Bogle, Zip It Up, and all the dance moves of the ’90s were showcased there. The club is a major part of the history of the emergence of dancehall culture,” Howard said.
Vivian Blake died of kidney failure and diabetes on March 21, 2010 in Kingston Jamaica after spending 8 years in prison for a 28 year sentence and then deported on January 29, 2009. Several months before he died, he announced that he was working on a script titled “Dancehall” about two American girls who wished to learn about Jamaican dancehall culture.
