2 languages
Coxsone Dodd
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Coxsone Dodd · Clement Seymour Dodd, nicknamed Coxsone, was born in Kingston in 1932 and died in 2004. He was a Jamaican producer with great influence on the development of ska and reggae. He got his nickname at school, because he was so good at cricket that friends compared him with the cricketer Alec Coxon. As a boy Dodd played records for the customers in his parents' shop. During a stay in the southern United States he got to know the rhythm and blues that was popular there.
Music and breakthrough
In 1954, back in Jamaica, he set up the Downbeat Sound System, with an amplifier, a turntable and American records from New Orleans and Miami. He opened five sound systems, which played every night, and gave people such as Lee Perry, U-Roy and Prince Buster a job. When rhythm and blues went out of fashion in America, he had to have Jamaican music recorded himself. In 1959 he founded the label Worldisc, and in 1963 he opened Studio One on Brentford Road in Kingston, the first studio in Jamaica owned by a Black owner.
Influence
In the early 1960s he produced ska by Toots and the Maytals, the Gaylads and the Skatalites. At his Sunday evening auditions Bob Marley dropped by with the Wailers. In the late 1960s and in the 1970s the Studio One sound was a byword for ska, rocksteady and reggae, with artists such as Burning Spear, Delroy Wilson, Horace Andy and Sugar Minott. His song You're Wondering Now was later covered by the Specials and Amy Winehouse, among others.
Listening
Mentioned in other articles
- Soundsystem Technology
Owners such as Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd began recording records themselves in order to have something their competitor did not have.