The house bands that built the Jamaican sound

We The People Band was founded by bassist-vocalist Lloyd Parks in the mid-1970s out of the Skin, Flesh and Bones lineup, becoming Dennis Brown's touring band for more than two decades and a fixture at Reggae Sunsplash and Reggae Sumfest.

Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's studio and label at 13 Brentford Road, Kingston — the closest thing Jamaican music has to a foundation. From 1963 onward it moved through ska, rocksteady and early reggae, and the rhythms cut in its rooms became the raw material for everything after: the Studio One catalogue is versioned, toasted over and sampled to this day, and a working knowledge of it is effectively a working knowledge of the music. Its house bands (the Skatalites, later Sound Dimension) and its roll of first recordings — The Wailers, Alton Ellis, Burning Spear, Dennis Brown, Marcia Griffiths, Horace Andy and many more — make it the single most connected node in this archive. Officially the Jamaican Recording and Publishing Studio, it was built out of a former nightclub at 13 Brentford Road in Cross Roads, which Dodd acquired in 1962 and converted with his father's help — the first Black-owned recording studio in Jamaica. The address served as studio, label headquarters and shopfront at once, which is what earned it the "Motown of Jamaica" comparison. Days before Dodd's death in May 2004 the Jamaican government renamed Brentford Road as Studio One Boulevard.

Skin, Flesh and Bones was an early-1970s backing band formed around bassist Lloyd Parks with Sly Dunbar on drums and Ansel Collins on piano and organ, resident at Kingston's Tit For Tat club and scoring a 1973 Jamaica/UK hit with "Here I Am Baby"; its personnel fed directly into both The Revolutionaries and Parks's own We The People Band.

The Professionals were producer Joe Gibbs' house band at his Retirement Crescent studio from the early 1970s, featuring Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare and Earl "Chinna" Smith; working alongside engineer Errol Thompson as "The Mighty Two", they backed over 100 Jamaican number-one hits including Dennis Brown's "Money in My Pocket".

The Soul Brothers were Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's Studio One house band of 1965-66, formed after The Skatalites split and led musically by Jackie Mittoo, cutting the rhythm tracks that Studio One's singers voiced over before the band was renamed Soul Vendors in 1967.

Clue J & His Blues Blasters, led by double bassist Cluett Johnson with Ernest Ranglin, Rico Rodriguez, Roland Alphonso, Theophilus Beckford and Arkland "Drumbago" Parks, recorded "Shuffling Jug" (1959) for Coxsone Dodd; several members went on to form The Skatalites.

Studio One's house band of the rocksteady moment, led by keyboardist Jackie Mittoo — the configuration between the Skatalites and the Sound Dimension. They cut instrumentals under their own name, backed the label's singers, and toured Britain in 1967 with Alton Ellis and Ken Boothe.

The Roots Radics are a Jamaican band formed in 1978 by bassist Errol "Flabba" Holt, guitarist Eric "Bingy Bunny" Lamont and drummer Lincoln "Style" Scott. They became the dominant studio and stage band of the early 1980s, spearheading the sparse, bass-heavy sound that launched the dancehall era, and were closely associated with Henry "Junjo" Lawes's productions at Channel One. They backed artists including Gregory Isaacs, Bunny Wailer, Eek-A-Mouse and Israel Vibration.

The Revolutionaries were the house band at Channel One studio in Kingston during the mid-to-late 1970s, working under producer Joseph Hoo Kim. Anchored by Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, they defined the militant "rockers" drum-and-bass style and backed many roots hits, including the Mighty Diamonds' "Right Time" and instrumentals such as "MPLA.".

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.

The Studio One house band of the late 1960s, Jackie Mittoo directing, whose session work became the music's permanent infrastructure: "Real Rock", "Full Up", "Heavenless" and dozens more foundation rhythms are Sound Dimension recordings. Few bands anywhere have been versioned more and named less.

Taxi Gang is the expanded studio and touring band built around producer-musicians Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare following their 1978-79 launch of the Taxi label, drawing on session players including Robbie Lyn, Franklyn "Bubbler" Waul and Ronald "Nambo" Robinson to anchor the 1980s "rockers" and rub-a-dub sound on productions for Black Uhuru and others.