Augustus Pablo & King Tubby

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Augustus Pablo & King Tubby · Augustus Pablo, born Horace Swaby in 1953 in St. Andrew in Jamaica, was a composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist in roots reggae and dub. At Kingston College he learned to play the organ and was lent a melodica by a girl, the wind instrument with keys for which he became known. He met the producer Herman Chin Loy and played with the Now Generation, Mikey Chung's band. In 1972 he recorded Java with Clive Chin. He worked with Lee Perry, Bob Marley, Horace Andy and the Heptones, among others.

Music and breakthrough

In 1974 he recorded Baby I Love You So with Jacob Miller. His dub version, King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown, was mixed by the sound engineer King Tubby and appears at number 266 in Rolling Stone's list. In 1976 the album King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown appeared. Later albums are East of the River Nile from 1978 and Original Rockers from 1979. In 1997 he played melodica on Star by Primal Scream. Pablo died in 1999 of a collapsed lung, after having suffered for a long time from the nerve disease myasthenia gravis.

Influence

Dub is reggae in which the engineer in the studio takes the tracks apart: the bass and the percussion remain, while the vocals and the instruments come and go, with echo and reverb. The melodica therefore sounds like a ghostly, somewhat sad voice. In this way the mixing desk became an instrument and dub grew into an inspiration for later dance and electronic music.

Listening

• 
  King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown · Augustus Pablo & King Tubby, 1976
  Apple Music ↗

See also

• Dub