Tiger Delivers on a Comeback Promise : Pop Music: The Jamaican deejay’s dancehall style made him a star in 1986 but then he stumbled.

Three years ago, Tiger seemed destined to join the ranks of dancehall reggae’s flash-in-the-pan stars.

The distinctive growl and manic delivery of the Jamaican deejay, who headlines the first night of the three-day “Bob Marley Birthday Celebration” Friday at the Long Beach Arena, took Jamaican music by storm in 1986.

Tiger enjoyed a string of huge hits--including “Wanga Gut,” “Puppy Love,” “Bam Bam” and “Ram Dancehall”--for two years, but mediocre releases and a cocaine problem hurt his momentum.

“I knew I had to (come back),” Tiger, 32, said forcefully during a recent phone interview from Kingston, Jamaica. “Whatever I need and want, I go for it, but that kind of a pause won’t happen again.

“I won’t be going back to that class. I learned to stay away from things that’s not good in the most radical way.”

And Tiger delivered on his comeback promise. Two years ago “Cool Me Down” and “When” restored his presence within the reggae world. His first album for a major American label--”Claws of the Cat” on Sony Music’s Chaos subsidiary--is due by this summer.

Tiger’s headlining performance Friday will cap the opening night of the 12th annual Marley celebration. Friday’s 7:30 p.m. show also features deejay Cutty Ranks, deejay-singer Tony Rebel and smooth vocalist Coco Tea.

The Saturday and Sunday concerts, scheduled for a 2 p.m. start, are headlined by British reggae singer Maxi Priest and Bob Marley’s old backing band the Wailers. Other major artists on those bills: the popular Jamaican vocalist Freddie McGregor and ex-Black Uhuru lead singer Michael Rose on Saturday, and singer Half Pint and the Wailing Souls on Sunday.

But Friday’s dancehall night is a watershed of sorts for the uptempo, often electronic sound, and an acknowledgment of the style’s growing impact on American audiences. When it began dominating Jamaican music in the mid-’80s, dancehall was greeted by many old-line reggae fans with all the affection rock fans here had shown to disco a decade before.

“Dancehall music has really been the underground music, not only in Jamaica but here in L.A.,” said festival co-producer Barbara Barabino. “When people go out, that’s the kind of music they really swing to. We’re really depicting what’s going on out there in the streets, at the dances, the clubs and all the underground spots.”

Dancehall’s biggest American success stories have been Shabbac Ranks and Mad Cobra, representatives of the style’s “slackness” side, where the lyrics focus on sexual boasting.

But maintaining the “conscious” lyrical thrust of the Marley legacy was a prime objective in selecting artists for the dancehall bill.

“We couldn’t go out and get the obvious bigger names because that didn’t work on that consciousness level for us,” said festival co-producer Moss Jacobs.

The headliner, Tiger, was born Norman Washington Jackson, and the nickname is a family affair.

“They used to call my father Man Tiger,” he said. “I didn’t like the idea of them calling me Tiger but I was good at some activities. They’d say, ‘Yo, Tiger,’ whenever I scored in a game or something, and it stuck.”

Tiger began hanging out with a reggae band playing near his old school, leading to free-lance gigs with bands at hotels and discos. Deejaying at mobile sound system dances around Kingston gave him a healthy local reputation by 1985.

“I started out singing but doors weren’t opened so I had to make some noise,” Tiger recalled. “The first time I ever held a mike, I started-- Grrrrrr, rowwwww --and developed that all the way.”