He understood the benefits of multi-track recording and began to mix vocals onto a separate channel in the mid-60s, enabling him to reuse a popular rhythm track to make new records with fresh vocal or instrumental lines. So Coxsone opened his own studio, pressed his own records, ran record shops, found his own talent, and produced and sometimes mixed his own tunes before playing them on his own sound system. Any one of these achievements would have made him one of the best reggae producers to ever get behind the console – yet Reid makes a claim to all three.Ĭlement Seymour “Coxsone” Dodd was among the first Jamaican producers to realize that, in order to control your product, you had to control the means of production.
His legacy was massive, however: he’d perfected rocksteady, given the world a soundman’s attitude to music, and helped create the basis for rap and reggae’s toasting boom.
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Other producers had tried recording this founding father of the MC’s art, but didn’t catch him right Reid set U Roy free on his classic rocksteady rhythms and made him a Jamaican sensation throughout 19, which essentially marked the start of hip-hop.īy 1972, reggae was changing and Treasure Isle was struggling to keep up with heavier skanky sounds Reid was unwell and increasingly took a back seat, succumbing to cancer in 1975. It’s somewhat ironic, then, that perhaps his most pioneering role, for which he easily earns his place among the best reggae producers in history, was recording U Roy, the Rastafarian DJ on King Tubby’s sound system. However, at heart he was a sentimental man, hence the essential sweetness and romance in his music – he didn’t allow what he saw as downbeat lyrics in the studio and routinely turned down songs expressing Rasta philosophy. Reid was tough, however he reputedly conducted financial negotiations while cradling his gun, and if he didn’t think the music he was hearing in his studio was groovy, he’d fire the weapon to let everyone know how he felt. He excelled in recording vocal groups such as The Paragons, The Melodians, and The Sensations, and cut beautiful sides with Alton Ellis, Phyllis Dillon, and John Holt.
Such was his dominance that Trojan Records in the UK was named for his sound and was originally formed in 1967 to release his tunes in the UK. He employed guitarist Lyn Taitt and saxman Tommy McCook to run auditions and arrange material, and recording engineer Byron Smith kept the sound tight, bright, and right.ĭuring the ska era, he cut great sides with Derrick Morgan, The Techniques, and Don Drummond, but Treasure Isle came into its own in the mid-60s, because its slower, gentler sound suited Reid and his musicians’ values. Reid liked his music to groove, be well-arranged, and melodic. He then opened a recording studio on the same premises as his liquor store, keeping the musicians happy with modest amounts of the shop’s product. When the R&B sound began to smooth off into soul in the late 50s, Duke made his own records, launching the Treasure Isle label, in a style that he knew the followers of his sound would like. His system, Duke Reid The Trojan, was well funded, so it was powerful, and Reid would go to America to buy R&B tunes that his rivals had never heard of, putting him at the forefront of his new trade. After leaving the cops, Reid and his wife ran a liquor store, Treasure Isle, while he pursued his passion of running a sound system from the mid-50s onwards.
The quintessential sound man turned producer, Duke Reid started his working career as a policeman in Kingston before moving into music and working his way towards becoming one of the world’s best reggae producers: clearly, he was tough enough to handle whatever the reggae business threw at him.