World of Jamaican Music

Discover artists and hear songs from everyone on the site! Log in to Spotify in this browser to hear full songs. SourcesYour Voice

An illustrated map of the creators of Jamaican music and how they are connected.

Remembering Derrick Harriott (1939-2026), rocksteady singer and producer. Read his story →

Clive Hunt

Producer. Reggae, roots, revival

Active
1969-present
Sunrise
May 31, 1952, Linstead, St. Catherine, Jamaica

Clive Hunt is a trumpeter, arranger and producer whose half-century of work runs from the Abyssinians' first album and Max Romeo's Revelation Time to the albums of the reggae revival.

Born in Linstead, St. Catherine, he learned the trumpet at Stony Hill School, joined the band of the 1st Battalion, the Jamaica Regiment, at seventeen, played with the Jamaica Philharmonic Orchestra, and studied theory and arranging at the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall, in England. Byron Lee recruited him for the Dragonaires. He had wanted to be a conductor rather than a player, and he made a point of learning the range of each instrument, on the principle that "to arrange for an instrument it is best that you know the instrument." His first session, on a track that became a British hit, was at Harry J's studio, in uniform, during an hour's lunch break from the army. From 1972 he worked with Geoffrey Chung and the Now Generation band, whom he calls his mentor, first as trumpeter and arranger and then as co-producer; he played horn on Lorna Bennett's Breakfast in Bed album.

In 1975 he supervised the first, unofficial pressing of the Abyssinians' Satta Massagana, and he produced Max Romeo's Revelation Time with Pete Weston; he joined Chung on Pablo Moses's A Song and Pave the Way. He became part of Joe Gibbs and Errol Thompson's studio, working with Dennis Brown, Barrington Levy and J.C. Lodge, and he arranged Peter Tosh's Mystic Man and Mama Africa. Living in New York in the late 1970s, he was a key member of Lloyd "Bullwackie" Barnes's session crew, and in 1977 he began the African Roots dub series, whose first volume the Rough Guide hears as owing much to the Black Ark.

His later productions include Beres Hammond's "Putting Up Resistance," Jimmy Cliff's "I Can See Clearly Now," and work in France with Cliff and Bernard Lavilliers and with Pierpoljak. Jah Cure's "That Girl" opened a new phase, and he has since produced a run of albums for VP and Greensleeves, among them We Remember Dennis Brown (2016), Rub-A-Dub Soul (2023), Samory I's Revelation and Mortimer's Grammy-nominated album. Dennis Brown called him "the Jamaican Quincy Jones." He describes his method as democratic until the moment he takes over: "I don't produce rhythms. I produce a song," he says, choosing players and an engineer to suit it, and letting everyone contribute before announcing, "I am going to captain the plane right now."

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Yasmine Peru, "More Work for Clive Hunt as He Turns 74 Today," Jamaica Gleaner, May 30, 2026, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/20260530/more-work-clive-hunt-he-turns-74-today.
  2. Peru, "More Work for Clive Hunt."
  3. Angus Taylor, "Interview: Clive Hunt in Kingston (Part 1)," United Reggae, January 2, 2017, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n2156/010217/interview-clive-hunt-in-kingston-part-1.
  4. Peru, "More Work for Clive Hunt." "Clive Hunt on Making Reggae and New Album Rub-A-Dub," VP Records, accessed October 21, 2026, https://vprecords.com/?p=18558, quoting him: "I was mentored by the great Geoffrey Chung as a studio musician and arranger."
  5. See the Abyssinians, Max Romeo and Pablo Moses entries. "Clive Hunt on Making Reggae."
  6. "Clive Hunt on Making Reggae." Peru, "More Work for Clive Hunt," on Tosh.
  7. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 427.
  8. Peru, "More Work for Clive Hunt." "Clive Hunt on Making Reggae," which also mentions seven consecutive albums that reached number one on the Billboard reggae chart.
  9. "Undeniably Clive Hunt," Jamaica Observer, August 17, 2026, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2026/08/17/undeniably-clive-hunt/.
  10. Taylor, "Interview: Clive Hunt."

World of Jamaican Music: the whole map