World of Jamaican Music

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

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Doctor Alimantado

Artist. Reggae, roots

Active
1970s-present
Sunrise
1952, Kingston, Jamaica
Also known as
The Ital Doctor, Ital Surgeon, Dr. Alimantado, Dr Alimantado, Winston Thompson, Winston Cool, Winston Prince, Youth Winston

Doctor Alimantado was one of the most original deejays of the 1970s, at his best when he produced himself.

He came from the Lord Tippertone sound system, which also gave the world Jah Stitch and Big Youth, and made his first records as Winston Cool, Winston Prince and Youth Winston. He voiced Bunny Lee's Aggrovators riddims and also worked with Lee Perry and at Randy's, but his talent flowered only when he controlled the sessions himself, on his Ital Sounds and Vital Food labels. From 1973 to 1976, by the Rough Guide's account, the "Ital Doctor" could do no wrong, with self-produced records such as "Poison Flour," "I Killed the Barber" and "Best Dressed Chicken in Town," which Perry engineered. Chris Jones hears "a low-pitched yowl" over records "developed from the contents of a toybox," hollowed out and disorienting at first, and truer to the Kingston of the time for it. He also made one of the early deejay duets with Jah Stitch, and revived Delroy Wilson's "Conquer Me."

His one sizable Jamaican hit was an atypical sung record cut at Channel One, "Born for a Purpose," made after he was knocked down by a bus. In Britain it was one of the two singles that launched Greensleeves in 1977, and that summer Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols played it on Capital Radio as one of his favorite records. His name was spray-painted on walls across west London and the single sold 50,000 copies. The Rough Guide judges that he failed to deliver much after that.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 191, 192. Bradley notes that he "rocked Kingston long before he became an icon among the UK's punk rockers." Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 304, 305.
  2. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 126.
  3. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 153, 156, 191.
  4. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 192. Prince Jammy and Phillip Smart later dubbed "I Kill the Barber." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 228.
  5. Chris Jones, "Fossil Records: Dr. Alimantado's Best Dressed Chicken in Town," Loser City, July 13, 2016, https://loser-city.com/features/fossil-records-dr-alimantados-best-dressed-chicken-in-town.
  6. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 74, 265.
  7. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 158. The accident is from Wikipedia, which dates it to 1977. "Dr Alimantado," Wikipedia, accessed October 6, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr_Alimantado (thinly sourced).
  8. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 392; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 447, 448. Bradley gives the single's title as "Reason for Living (Born for a Purpose)" and has it at number 3 in Rotten's top ten.
  9. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 192.

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