World of Jamaican Music

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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 →

Coxsone Dodd

Producer. Ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub

Active
1954-2004
Sunrise
January 26, 1932, Kingston, Jamaica
Sunset
May 4, 2004, Kingston, Jamaica (heart attack)
Also recorded as
Dub Specialist
Also known as
Clement Dodd, Clement Seymour Dodd

Clement Seymour Dodd built Studio One, and the case that he is the most important figure in Jamaican music is not difficult to make: most of the people who made that music passed through his studio, and a large part of what they played there is still being versioned.

He took the nickname Coxsone from the Yorkshire cricketer Alec Coxon. He started with a sound system, Downbeat, in the early 1950s, importing American R&B records and scratching the labels off to keep rivals from identifying them. He had first played records as a guest on Duke Reid's set; Downbeat's deejay was Count Machuki, and Prince Buster worked for it, warding off rival sounds, before starting his own in 1957. Competition with Duke Reid's Trojan sound pushed both men into recording their own material, initially to have exclusives to play. In 1963 Dodd opened his studio at 13 Brentford Road.

The list of people who began there is the point. The Wailers auditioned in late 1963 and recorded "Simmer Down," which went to number one. Alton Ellis, the Heptones, Burning Spear, Horace Andy, Delroy Wilson, Marcia Griffiths, Ken Boothe, Dennis Brown, the Gladiators, and the Abyssinians all recorded early work at Brentford Road. Sugar Minott swept the studio floor before he was allowed to record, and then worked out the practice of singing new lyrics over existing Studio One riddims, which is one of the origins of dancehall.

Dodd also built the bands. The Skatalites played the ska sessions, the Soul Vendors the rocksteady, and Sound Dimension the early reggae, with Jackie Mittoo as musical director for much of it and Alpha Boys School graduates including Roland Alphonso, Tommy McCook, and Don Drummond in the horn section. The riddims they cut have been reused continuously for sixty years, by Jamaican producers and then by everyone else.

The financial arrangements were another matter. Contracts were often verbal and royalties were minimal or absent. Leroy Sibbles arranged and played bass on a large number of the riddims that became Studio One's most valuable property and was paid a wage. Lee Perry left in bitterness and recorded "Small Axe" with the Wailers, in which the small axe cuts down the big tree, generally read as the three producers then dominating the business. Musicians kept returning anyway, because the records Dodd made sounded better than the alternatives. Much of that sound was his own engineering. Sibbles told Bradley that Dodd set the studio up himself, on two six-track Lang mixers bought in New York, and gave the bass and drums three channels each against one for the horns, so that the foundation sounded strong and fat; the balance depended on that room and on where the musicians stood. Dodd also knew how to get a better take: if a singer was falling short, he would muse aloud that the tune might do well as an instrumental, and the singer, fearing to lose the voicing fee, would improve on the next take.

After armed robbers attacked Brentford Road he moved to New York in the 1980s, recorded and ran a record shop in Brooklyn, and kept reissuing the catalog. He moved back to Kingston in 1998, reopened the studio for new recordings, and departed there in May 2004, shortly after Brentford Road was renamed Studio One Boulevard in his honor.

Last updated October 31, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 212, writes that "for the first few years of reggae Studio One was the music's overall development"; Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 89, calls it "the most influential studio of all."
  2. Bradley says "Coxsone was a celebrated post-war Yorkshire cricketer" and that Dodd earned the name for his own prowess at cricket. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 28. Wikipedia names the cricketer as Alec Coxon and reports that Dodd told Roger Steffens the name was spelled "Coxson." "Coxsone Dodd," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coxsone_Dodd.
  3. Bradley describes Dodd building Sir Coxsone's Downbeat with equipment and records bought while cane-cutting in the United States, and playing "more jazz than anything else" at first. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 28. He describes the scratching off of label copy as standard practice among sound men. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 120. Katz says that before Downbeat Dodd did guest spots on Duke Reid's set, that his own sound had a "superior selection of R&B and rare jazz discs" and the deejay Count Machuki, and that Prince Buster "staved off attacks from rival sound systems" for it before going his own way in 1957: David Katz, "Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd," Guardian, May 6, 2004, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/may/06/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries.
  4. On Duke Reid's sound, "Duke Reid the Trojan," Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 29. Bradley says Dodd "burst out laughing" in 1959 when told his recordings had value beyond the sound system, and the Rough Guide dates the sound-system owners' move into commercial record production, "as opposed to cutting acetates for their dances," to 1959. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 44; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 20.
  5. Bradley says Dodd took over premises that had housed a nightclub called The End, installed a one-track board, and was then "the only black man in Jamaica to own a recording studio." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 99. See also Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 37. Katz dates the opening to October 1963: Katz, "Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd."
  6. The Rough Guide says the Wailers turned up at a Brentford Road audition "one morning in late 1963," were signed "just before Christmas," and that "Simmer Down" stayed at the top of the Jamaican charts for two months after its release at the end of December 1963. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 38. David Katz dates the audition to July 1964. David Katz, "Cherry Green," Guardian, November 20, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/nov/20/popandrock.
  7. Leroy Sibbles names Cornell Campbell, the Mad Lads, Burning Spear, and the Meditations among the acts who came through his Sunday auditions, and Bradley adds Horace Andy. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 221. Alton Ellis had recorded for Dodd at Federal in 1959, before Brentford Road opened. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 20.
  8. The Rough Guide says Sugar Minott's 1978 Studio One album Live Loving "played an important part" in the development of dancehall "by showing how new lyrics could be seamlessly grafted onto old rhythms." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 263.
  9. Bradley dates the gathering of the Skatalites to 1963 at Brentford Road and calls Mittoo "Coxsone's resident musical arranger/talent scout"; the Rough Guide dates the Sound Dimension recordings to late 1967 through Mittoo's departure for Canada in 1968. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 100, 201; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 90. Bradley names Drummond and McCook among Alpha Boys' School's old boys; neither book places Alphonso there. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 101.
  10. The Rough Guide says Studio One "supplied the original cuts for nearly all the rhythms" being recorded in Kingston at the start of the dancehall era. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 263.
  11. Keble Drummond of the Cables said Dodd promised him money from an album that "sold a lot," "But he never got me some," and Clinton Fearon of the Gladiators said, "I get no money from Coxsone." Peter I, "Keble 'Cables' Drummond: What Kind of World (The Interview), Part 2," Reggae Vibes, February 5, 2024, https://www.reggae-vibes.com/articles/2024/02/keble-cables-drummond-what-kind-of-world-the-interview-part-2/; Catherine Fearon, "Interview: Clinton Fearon Part 2," United Reggae, August 9, 2010, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n437/080910/interview-clinton-fearon-part-2.
  12. Bradley says Dodd kept his musical directors, Jackie Mittoo and Leroy Sibbles, "on wages." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 212. Sibbles describes himself as "a singer, writer, arranger, bass player" at Studio One. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 217.
  13. Perry had left Dodd by January 1967, when his "barbed message to his former employer," "I Am the Upsetter," was a hit for Joe Gibbs. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 76. "Small Axe" was a Jamaican top five hit in 1970. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 345. The Rough Guide applies the image to the young producers challenging "the dominance of Dodd and Reid." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 87.
  14. Sibbles said other producers "tried to build their places like it, but nowhere else could get that balance." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 219.
  15. Leroy Sibbles, interviewed by Bradley. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 219.
  16. Wikipedia says Dodd closed his studio and moved to New York in the mid-1980s. "Coxsone Dodd," Wikipedia. Bradley says Dodd spent much of the second half of the 1970s re-releasing his back catalog. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 351. Katz says that after armed robbers attacked the Brentford Road premises Dodd moved Studio One to Brooklyn, recording there through the 1980s and early 1990s, and that he moved back to Kingston in 1998, after his mother's death, and reopened Brentford Road for new recordings: Katz, "Clement 'Sir Coxsone' Dodd."
  17. The Gleaner says he died of "apparent heart complications" on May 4, 2004, and that Brentford Road had been renamed "just days before." "Coxson Ran Downbeat, Studio One," Jamaica Gleaner, August 25, 2014, http://past.jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20140825/coxson-ran-downbeat-studio-one.

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