Big Joe
Artist. Reggae, roots
- Active
- 1972-1980s
- Sunrise
- 1955, Kingston, Jamaica
- Also known as
- Joseph Spalding
Big Joe was one of the most consistently interesting of the deejays who followed U-Roy and Dennis Alcapone onto record in the early 1970s.
He began with Harry Mudie, whose Moodisc label issued "Run Girl" in 1972, and toasted on versions of Lloyd "Matador" Daley's vocal hits, among them "Glitter (And Not Gold)." In 1973 the Stop Point label issued his "Selassie Skank" and "Weed Specialist." The Rough Guide judges that he made his best records for Studio One, Daley, Mudie and Leonard "Santic" Chin, for whom he cut versions alongside Augustus Pablo's instrumentals. He also voiced Bunny Lee's Aggrovators riddims in the mid-1970s, sharing a version of Johnny Clarke's "Dance Crashers" with Pablo.
He later ran his own Small Axe sound system and label, and played himself, toasting at a sound-system dance, in the film Rockers (1978).
Last updated October 14, 2026
Connections
- Coxsone Dodd (producer)
- Bunny "Striker" Lee (producer)
- Lloyd Daley (producer)
- Harry Mudie (producer)
- Augustus Pablo (collaborator)
- Studio One (studio)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 126.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 108, 112. "Big Joe & Mudies All Stars / Ian Robinson & Mudies All Stars: Run Girl / T. Bone Girl," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/6194779; "Big Joe: Glitter (And Not Gold)," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/3939418, on Daley's Matador label, dated 1972.
- "Big Joe / Stop Point All Stars: Selassie Skank / Big Head 50 Skank," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/7339129; "Big Joe: Weed Specialist / Zion Train Dub," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/5718376. Wikipedia credits these to the producer Winston Edwards. "Big Joe (reggae)," Wikipedia, accessed October 6, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Joe_(reggae).
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 126, 174.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 105, 153, 156.
- "Big Joe (reggae)," Wikipedia, accessed October 6, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Joe_(reggae) (thinly sourced; Wikipedia also gives his birth as 1955 in Kingston).
