Coxsone Dodd, one of Jamaica’s top producers, was to his music what Berry Gordy and James Brown were to soul music. From the Rock Steady era of the 1960s to the present day, he recognised what the buying public wanted to hear and purchase. Bad record-keeping has hidden much of his involvement in the music scene, but the people know and will eventually tell his story. His help to Bob Marley has been well documented recently and he also served as a mentor for future production wizards like Lee Perry and Niney. It’s probably hard to find another back-room boy that would meet all of his criteria, and now that he is gone, who will? 

The Early Years

At the time he was born his parents were running a booze business in Kingston, Jamaica (26/01/32). His first DJ experience came while playing jazz records and getting his ‘Coxsone’ handle from a Yorkshire cricketer at the time. Leaving school to work the sugar cane fields of America’s Deep South, falling in love with the R&B sound he heard there. Taking his records home with him in 1954 gave him a good hold on the mobile sound systems taking place then. Large knobs and dials and massive loudspeakers were wooing the public at the time. They were cheaper for the club owners than booking a live band.

Dodd’s setup was called ‘Sir Coxsone the Downbeat’ and became one of the most popular in Jamaica. Covering up tunes was all part of the competition at the time, early scratching and rap also came out of this period.

When the music eventually changed around 1959 to rock ‘n’ roll Dodd decided to press his own records, at first, just for the sound systems but later due to demand from the public to buy instrumentals.

Pioneering The Music Industry In Jamaica

In 1963, Coxsone opened the first black-owned recording studio in Jamaica on Brentford Road in Kingston; called the Jamaican Recording and Publishing Studio; it later came to be known as Studio One. Bob Marley & the Wailers recorded their chart-topping debut smash ‘Simmer Down’ in the process. Studio One became an invaluable training ground for an entire generation for years to come and providing a strong foundation for the continued development of the country’s recording industry.

During the latter half of the ’60s, Skatalites slowed down into a new style dubbed rocksteady. Despite his earlier successes, it was during this period that Dodd truly hit his creative peak, and it remains the most often sampled portion of his extensive catalogue. Helped by new multi-track recording Griffiths and Ken Boothe, plus the ever-evolving post-Skatalites studio band (first dubbed the Soul Brothers, then the Soul Vendors and by 1970, the Sound Dimension).

With the advent of dub reggae, Dodd was no longer on the cutting edge of production techniques by the early 70s and his frantic recording pace finally began to slow down. Still, his skills were perfectly suited to the roots reggae era, and he continued to produce some of the era’s biggest stars: Burning Spear, Horace Andy, Dennis Brown, Dennis Alcapone and Freddie McGregor (whose early album Bobby Babylon is widely considered to be one of Dodd’s finest latter-day works).

New Beginnings

As roots reggae gave way to dancehall in the early 80s, Dodd initially kept pace via his work with the likes of Sugar Minott, Johnny Osbourne, Frankie Paul and Michigan & Smiley, among others. However, amid shifts in popular taste and political unrest, he soon decided to move his operations to New York City, opening both a studio and music store in Brooklyn. 

He returned to Jamaica on occasion and continued to produce records from time to time, though without the widespread success of old. In 1991, two all-star concerts in Jamaica celebrated Dodd’s 35^th anniversary in the music business and featured many of his old cohorts; meanwhile, the Heartbeat label (a subsidiary of Rounder) secured CD reissue rights to the vast Studio One catalogue. Releasing both various artists’ compilations and individual artistic collections.

A Fitting Commemoration

In 1993, Dodd embarked on a lengthy legal battle to collect unpaid royalties related to samples of material from his vast back catalogue that was lifted without credit or permission. By 2000, he’d shifted his attention from individual producers to big-time distributors like the VP label. In 2004, Coxsone returned to Jamaica for a celebration in his honour in recognition  of his contribution to Jamaican culture. The building on Brentford Road in Kingston that serves as home to his recording studio that was once so pivotal to the development of reggae was renamed Studio One Boulevard. Tragically, Clement ‘Coxsone’ Dodd died of a heart attack just four days after the ceremony on May 4, 2004. 

If you have any memories of Dodd, please send them in.

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