STUDIO ONE
Coxsone Dodd’s Brentford Road workshop: ska, rocksteady, reggae and generations of singers tested against the dance. Few rooms shaped more of Jamaica’s recorded vocabulary.
Clement “Coxsone” Dodd came to recording through sound-system competition. When imported American R&B could no longer satisfy the dances, he began cutting Jamaican music for his own systems, then built a studio on Brentford Road in Kingston in 1962 and launched the Studio One label from there. The room became a meeting place for musicians who helped define ska, rocksteady and reggae. The Skatalites, Jackie Mittoo, Alton Ellis, Delroy Wilson, The Heptones, Bob Marley & The Wailers and many others passed through its sessions. Just as important as the individual records were the bass lines, riddims and arrangements that later generations kept returning to. Studio One is less a chapter than a musical vocabulary Jamaican artists have been quoting, versioning and arguing with ever since.