Coxsone Dodd

Clement Seymour Dodd was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on the 26th January 1932, the son of benjamin Dodd, a local building contractor, and the former Doris Darlington. While at All Saints school he was given the nickname Coxsone, due to his prowess as a batsman and all-round cricketer (the original coxson being star batsman for the famous Yorkshire cricket team of the 1940's). Coxsone first began playing bebop and jazz records for the customers of his parents liquor store, which was originally situated on laws street, in Kingston, and later on Beeston Street. Following a brief spell working as a cane cutter in the American south, where he discovered the shuffling R&B rhythm then so popular at rent parties and outdoor dances, Dodd returned to Jamaica with his own PA equipment, turntable and box of records.
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"Sir Coxsone the downbeat" set up his first sound system around 1954, playing boogie-woogie, jazz and R&B records imported from New Orleans and Miami. As competition between the Island's sound systems grew with such rivals as Duke Reid ,Dodd was forced to travel throughout the US, to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, to find more and more exclusive tunes. Rainbow Records on 130th Street in New York's Harlem proved to be a lucrative source of good music, and he was lucky enough to find a wealth of records in Brooklyn. This intense rivalry also led to the practice of scratching out title and artist details from the label of the most sought after 78rpm records, often renamed to preserve their exclusivity - thus, Willis Jackson's LATER FOR GATOR, adopted by Dodd as the Downbeat theme tune became commonly known as COXSONE'S HOP. At the height of the sound system craze, Coxsone had as many as five different outfits operating each night, run by such luminaries as Prince Buster, King Stitt, U Roy and Lee Perry. When the supply of new R&B records began to diminish, Coxsone and other sound system operators were forced to begin recording Jamaican artists to satisfy the local fans. These earliest recordings were retained for the sole use of the sound system, but once it became apparent that there was a growing market for Jamaican productions, Dodd formed his first record company: World Disc. SHUFFLING JUG by Clue J and the Blues Blasters, recorded at Federal Studios in 1959, is reputed to be the first true C.S Dodd production. MY BABY by Jackie Estwick was recorded at the same session. Coxsone's Muzik City opened in East Queen Street, Kingston, at the end of 1959, and began distributing C.S Dodd productions on such labels as All Stars, C&N, D.Darling, Downbeat, Muzik City, N.D Records, Supreme, Worldisc, Coxsone and Studio One.