The record men: Chinese-Jamaican producers

Jamaican-Chinese retailer and producer who ran the counter at Aquarius Records in Half Way Tree from 1969, having earlier kept the One Stop shop at 125 King Street; his forward-thinking Aquarius productions and instrumentals (later compiled as 'Aquarius Rock') shaped early-1970s reggae, and he is credited with giving Augustus Pablo his stage name.

Guitarist, keyboardist and arranger whose credits run from the Now Generation band of the early 1970s through Channel One session work to the Compass Point sessions with Sly and Robbie behind Grace Jones and others — one of the quiet constants of Jamaican studio craft across three decades.

Miami-based producer, remixer and selector (Dwayne 'Supa Dups' Chin-Quee) of Chinese-Afro-Jamaican descent who co-founded the Black Chiney sound in 1999; he won a Grammy for work on Eminem's Recovery and produced for Damian Marley, Bruno Mars and Buju Banton.

Ska-era label run by Chinese-Jamaican producer Justin Yap, whose Studio One sessions with the Skatalites and Don Drummond in 1964 yielded some of the genre's finest instrumentals.

Chinese-Jamaican keyboardist, guitarist, producer and engineer (d. 1995) of the Now Generation band who engineered Peter Tosh albums at Dynamic Sounds, co-produced early Frankie Paul, and later produced Maxi Priest in Miami.

Vincent "Randy" Chin (1937-2003) was a Chinese-Jamaican entrepreneur who founded Randy's Records and, above his North Parade shop, the influential Randy's Studio 17, a hub of early-1970s reggae where artists such as Bob Marley, Augustus Pablo, Gregory Isaacs and Burning Spear recorded. With his wife Patricia he later relocated to New York, opening VP Records (named for Vincent and Patricia) in Queens in 1979, which grew into the world's largest independent distributor of Caribbean music.

Herman Chin Loy's Kingston studio and label in Half Way Tree, an early-1970s hub where his Aquarius Dub (1973) helped establish dub as an album form. The operation grew from the family's Aquarius record shop, one of uptown Kingston's main record counters.

Bandleader of the Dragonaires from the 1950s and one of the music's great businessmen: he bought WIRL and rebuilt it as Dynamic Sounds in 1968, led the ska delegation to the 1964 New York World's Fair, and made the Dragonaires the Caribbean's hardest-working carnival band. Uptown where the music was downtown, and indispensable anyway. He died in 2008.

Joseph "Jo Jo" Hoo Kim (1942-2018) was a Jamaican record producer and engineer who founded Channel One Studios on Maxfield Avenue in West Kingston in the early 1970s. His productions with the studio's house band, the Revolutionaries (built around Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare), defined the mid-1970s rockers sound and made Channel One a leading roots reggae hit factory. Source note: Joseph Hoo Kim Wikipedia and The Vinyl Factory.

The Hoo Kim brothers' studio on Maxfield Avenue, opened in 1972, and the home of the rockers sound: Sly Dunbar's militant drumming with the Revolutionaries as house band drove a harder, four-square feel that displaced the one drop as the dominant rhythm of the mid-1970s. Channel One's recuts of Studio One rhythms were both tribute and commercial rivalry, and its output — with the Mighty Diamonds, the Wailing Souls, Junior Byles and others — defined the sound of roots reggae's peak years.

Leslie Kong (1933-1971) was a Chinese-Jamaican producer who ran the Beverley's shop and record label on Orange Street, Kingston. Encouraged by a young Jimmy Cliff in 1961, he launched Beverley's and recorded Bob Marley's first singles ("Judge Not," "One Cup of Coffee") in 1962. Known for polished, accessible productions, he scored major international hits with Desmond Dekker ("Israelites," "007 Shanty Town"), the Pioneers, the Melodians and Toots and the Maytals before his death from a heart attack in 1971.

Chinese-Jamaican producer and owner of the Top Deck label who, over an all-night November 1964 session at Studio One, cut some of the finest instrumental ska - including Don Drummond compositions such as 'Chinatown' and 'Confucius' - later gathered on the Skatalites' Ska Boo-Da-Ba.

In Jamaica's foundation years the man who paid for the session owned the sound - and often the shop, the studio and the label too.

Behind U-Roy, Big Youth and Dennis Alcapone stood toasters whose records shaped the style but whose names rarely make the standard histories.

In Jamaica and the diaspora, the retail counter was the A&R department.

Reggae is often called bass music; these are some of the hands that made the bassline the lead instrument.