From Brentford Road to a global No. 1: the long life of a Studio One riddim

Clement Seymour Dodd (1932-2004), sound-system operator, producer and founder of Studio One. He came up running the Downbeat sound in the 1950s, in direct rivalry with Duke Reid, importing American R&B and scratching the labels off so rivals could not identify what he was playing. From 1963 he built at 13 Brentford Road the studio that gave first recordings to a remarkable share of Jamaican music's canon — The Wailers, Burning Spear, Alton Ellis, Marcia Griffiths, Dennis Brown, Horace Andy, John Holt — and it is widely described as the first recording studio in Jamaica owned by a Black Jamaican, a claim repeated often enough to be worth attributing rather than stating flatly. The house bands he assembled, the Skatalites and later Sound Dimension, cut rhythms that have been versioned continuously for sixty years, which is why the label is so often called the Motown of Jamaica. He moved his base to New York in the 1980s while the catalogue kept working without him. He died on 4 May 2004, days after the stretch of Brentford Road outside the studio was renamed Studio One Boulevard in his honour.

Studio One rocksteady rhythm from Carlton & the Shoes' 1968 "Love Me Forever," produced by Clement "Coxsone" Dodd; its companion B-side "Happy Land" supplied the melodic seed for the Abyssinians' "Satta Massagana," and the rhythm stayed in the Studio One versioning stock.

Kingston singer, bassist and arranger who led the Heptones and, as Studio One's house bassist, wrote many of reggae's foundational basslines. A two-week visit to Toronto in November 1973 became twenty-two years: Sibbles anchored the fledgling Canadian reggae scene as its biggest resident star, won the 1987 Juno for Reggae Recording of the Year with "Mean While", and is honoured on the Reggae Lane mural in Little Jamaica. He moved home to Jamaica in the mid-1990s and still performs both catalogues. He told Bradley the Heptones' "Fattie Fatty" was written after he saw a heavyset woman he knew only as "Miss B" walking down the road; briefly radio-banned as "too rude", it became so ubiquitous it is credited with putting Studio One on the map. As de facto musical director there from the mid-1960s he ran Sunday auditions requiring singers to bring at least four or five songs to prove seriousness, and described Coxsone Dodd's habit of saying, within an underperforming singer's earshot, that a track might work better "as instrumental", a bluff to spur a better take. Sibbles also said Dodd had personally imported two six-channel mixing desks from a New York firm, Lang, giving three channels each to drums and bass and one to horns, which Sibbles calls the technical foundation of the Studio One sound.

Studio One instrumental rhythm cut by the Sound Dimension in the late 1960s, one of the foundation riddims. Its best-known journey runs through the Mighty Diamonds' "Pass the Kouchie" (1981) to Musical Youth's "Pass the Dutchie", a UK number one in 1982 — one Brentford Road session financing decades of versions.

The Abyssinians' Rastafari anthem, first cut at Studio One in 1969 and self-released in 1971, built on a melody related to Carlton & the Shoes' "Happy Land"; one of roots reggae's most covered and versioned songs.

The Mighty Diamonds' 1981 roots anthem produced by Gussie Clarke on Studio One's "Full Up" rhythm; adapted a year later by Musical Youth as the global hit "Pass the Dutchie.".

Birmingham group Musical Youth's 1982 reworking of the Mighty Diamonds' "Pass the Kouchie," on the same Studio One "Full Up" rhythm with the ganja reference swapped for a cooking-pot "dutchie"; a UK and international number one and a landmark of reggae's global crossover.

The Abyssinians are a Jamaican roots reggae harmony group formed in 1968 by Bernard Collins with brothers Donald and Lynford Manning. Their 1969 recording "Satta Massagana," a Rastafarian hymn sung partly in Amharic, became one of the most influential roots tracks ever made and helped set the blueprint for the roots movement, later anchoring their acclaimed 1976 album of the same name. The group split around 1980 but the original lineup reunited in 1998.

The Mighty Diamonds were a Jamaican vocal harmony trio formed in Kingston in 1969, comprising Donald "Tabby" Shaw, Fitzroy "Bunny" Simpson and Lloyd "Judge" Ferguson. They became one of the defining roots-reggae harmony groups of the 1970s, most celebrated for the 1976 album "Right Time," recorded at Channel One with the Revolutionaries and produced by Joseph Hoo Kim, and for the single "Pass the Kouchie." The group performed and recorded for decades until lead singer Tabby Shaw was killed in 2022.

British reggae group from Birmingham whose 1982 "Pass the Dutchie" - a reworking of the Mighty Diamonds' "Pass the Kouchie" - became an international number one, a landmark of reggae's global crossover.