Wake the Town: Duke Reid's rocksteady and the birth of the deejay record

U-Roy's second 1970 Treasure Isle hit for Arthur "Duke" Reid, toasting over the Paragons' rocksteady rhythm; with "Wake the Town" it gave U-Roy multiple simultaneous chart entries and cemented the toasting record.

Ewart Beckford (1942-2021), the deejay who made toasting a recorded form. He had been talking over records on the sound systems for years — with Dickie Dynamic, Sir George the Atomic, and most importantly on Coxsone Dodd's Downbeat — when Duke Reid put him on the Treasure Isle rocksteady rhythms in 1970. The results took over the Jamaican charts, at one point reportedly holding the top three positions at once with "Wake the Town", "Rule the Nation" and "Wear You to the Ball", and the album Version Galore made the form permanent. What he established was that a deejay's voice over an existing rhythm was a record in its own right, not a novelty: everything from Jamaican deejaying to rap descends in part from those sessions. He ran his own Stur-Gav Hi-Fi from the late 1970s, the sound that gave Josey Wales and Charlie Chaplin their start, and recorded into his final years. He was awarded the Order of Distinction and died on 17 February 2021.

The Paragons were a Jamaican rocksteady vocal trio, led by John Holt, best known for "The Tide Is High" (1967), produced by Duke Reid for his Treasure Isle label. The song became an international standard well beyond reggae after Blondie's 1980 cover topped both the US and UK charts, and it returned to UK number one again in 2002 in a version by Atomic Kitten.

Foundational rocksteady rhythm cut at Treasure Isle for producer Arthur "Duke" Reid, first heard under Alton Ellis's 1966 vocal (often cited among the earliest rocksteady sides) and later the backing track U-Roy toasted over for "Wake the Town" (1970), one of the records that launched deejay culture.

John Holt (John Kenneth Holt, 1947-2014) was a Jamaican singer who first found fame as lead vocalist of the rocksteady vocal group The Paragons, for whom he wrote "The Tide Is High" (later a hit for Blondie), recorded for Duke Reid's Treasure Isle label in the late 1960s. He launched a hugely successful solo career, cutting the album A Love I Can Feel for Studio One and later the popular 1000 Volts of Holt, and remained a fixture of Jamaican music until his death.

Alton Ellis was a Jamaican singer closely associated with the birth of rocksteady - his own song "Rocksteady" (1966) is one source of the genre's name - recording for both Coxsone Dodd's Studio One and Duke Reid's Treasure Isle. His ballad "I'm Still in Love," released in 1967, became one of the most repeatedly re-voiced and sampled rhythms in Jamaican music, covered and versioned across reggae and dancehall for decades after.

Arthur "Duke" Reid's studio above his liquor store at 33 Bond Street, Kingston, and the label of the same name. If Studio One owned ska, Treasure Isle owned rocksteady: from 1966 Reid's productions with Alton Ellis, the Techniques, the Paragons, Phyllis Dillon and John Holt defined the slower, sweeter, bass-forward form, and those rhythms became a second foundation catalogue — the basis of countless later versions, not least through U-Roy toasting over them in 1970.

U-Roy's 1970 debut for Arthur "Duke" Reid on Treasure Isle, toasted in one take over the "Girl I've Got a Date" rhythm; a Jamaican number one that helped establish the deejay/toasting record and modern deejay culture.

Arthur Reid (1915-1975), policeman turned liquor merchant, sound-system owner and producer. His Trojan sound contested the late-1950s dances with Coxsone's Downbeat, and from his Bond Street premises he built Treasure Isle into the defining rocksteady operation — Alton Ellis, the Techniques, the Paragons, Phyllis Dillon — before opening his rhythms to U-Roy's toasting in 1970 and helping launch the deejay record.

When the tempo dropped, harmony and bass moved to the front.

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.

In 1950s Kingston, Coxsone Dodd's Downbeat and Duke Reid's Trojan turned rival dances into the foundation of an entire music industry.

In Jamaica the rhythm track, not the finished song, is the durable unit of creativity.