[Deathwatch] Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd, record producer, 72

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Again, thanks to a reader for this.  Bad week for music producers - Ed.


Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd
(Filed: 06/05/2004)

Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd, the record producer who died on Tuesday
aged 72, was credited with launching the career of the reggae star Bob
Marley and was a hugely influential figure in the development of
Jamaican music.
	
The son of a building contractor and liquor store owner, Clement
Seymour Dodd was born at Kingston, Jamaica, on January 26 1932 and
acquired the nickname "Sir Coxsone" as a schoolboy, owing to his
prowess as a batsman (the original Coxsone was a star Yorkshire batsman
in the 1940s).

After a period working as a sugar cane cutter in Florida, where he
discovered American R'n'B, he returned to Jamaica with his own PA
equipment, turntable and box of records.

In the mid 1950s, as "Sir Coxsone the downbeat," he started out in
business operating a "sound system", or portable disco, taking
boogie-woogie, jazz and R'n'B records imported from New Orleans to
areas of Jamaica out of reach of American radio stations.

He was soon joined in the travelling music business by rivals,
including the gun-toting Duke Reid. In search of new music to gain an
edge, Dodd travelled as far afield as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia
and Cincinnati. At the height of the sound system craze, he had five
different systems touring the country every night.

When American R'n'B began to wane with the advent of rock and roll,
Dodd began recording Jamaican artists such as Jackie Estick and Bonnie
and Skeeter. In 1959, he founded his own record company, World Disc. A
shop, Coxsone's Music City, opened in Kingston later in the year and
began distributing records on a variety of labels including All Stars,
D Darling, Muzik City, Downbeat and Coxsone. The multiple imprints were
a ruse to hide the range of Dodd's output and bamboozle radio disc
jockeys who grew tired of being bombarded with his releases.

Dodd set to work to recast American-style jazz and R'n'B within the
African-Jamaican traditions of pocomania, mento and revivalism. The
resulting sound came to be known as "ska", from the "hepcat" greeting
"skavoovie". It was a genre that gave the Jamaican independence
movement its own distinctive beat and proved the forerunner of the
better-known reggae, as well as later inspiring a number of British
bands, notably The Specials and Madness.

In 1963, Dodd opened Studio One, Jamaica's first black-owned music
studio, installing a group called the Skatalites as the resident house
band. Later that year, a scruffy young singer named Bob Marley turned
up for an audition with his companions, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer,
who then called themselves the Juveniles. Dodd was impressed enough to
offer the group a five year contract and commissioned an expert to help
them improve their unsophisticated harmonies.

The first recording session took place a few days later with I'm Still
Waiting and It Hurts to Be Alone, with the Skatalites providing the
backing.

Dodd became a father figure to Marley, letting him live in a back room
at the studio when he found that the singer did not have a home. At
Dodd's suggestion, Marley emerged as the lead singer of the group,
recording the 1964 hit Simmer Down, an appeal for calm among Kingston's
unemployed slum dwellers. The song established The Wailers as the
musical voice of the "rude boys" of Jamaica's ghettos.

Other memorable hits recorded under Dodd's guidance included Put It On,
Rude Boy, Rule Dem Rudie, Jailhouse and One Love, which, with its
memorable refrain Let's get together and feel all right, went on to
become an anthem for the Rastafarian movement.

Besides Marley, Dodd is credited with launching the careers of dozens
of reggae stars, including Horace Andy, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Burning
Spear, Marcia Griffiths, Sugar Minott, Dennis Brown and Freddie
McGregor.

The 1970s saw the escalation of political violence and gang warfare in
Jamaica, fuelled by the drugs trade, a time reflected in the Willie
Williams song Armagideon Time (1979), a powerful, prophetic track which
likened the street battles of Kingston to a Biblical Armageddon.

During the 1980 Jamaican election campaign, in which 800 people died,
the area round Dodd's studio in Kingston became a war zone. Concluding,
reluctantly, that it was time to leave, Dodd relocated his studio and
record shop to Brooklyn, New York.

In 1991, Dodd was awarded the Jamaican Order of Distinction for his
contribution to the island's musical heritage.

Dodd is survived by a wife and several children.