Studio One, one of Jamaica’s most influential recording studios and labels, was founded by Clement “Coxsone” Dodd in the 1950s on Brentford Road, Kingston. His first recordings were made in 1963 and for the next 20 years, he would help reshape Jamaican popular music and propel it around the world.
Studios often play an important role in developing a sound and defining a genre. Think of the Funk Brothers at the heart of the Detroit-based soul label Motown Records, or Stax Records with house band Booker T and the MGs. You could also add in there the West Coast loose collective of session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew, members of which included bass maestro Carol Kaye and country icon Glen Campbell.
What links many of the musicians in these bands is their jazz, and sometimes classical, backgrounds. And Dodd did exactly the same when he set up Studio One. His first…
