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 →

Gladstone Anderson

Artist. Ska, rocksteady, reggae

Active
1960s-present
Sunrise
June 18, 1934, Jones Town, Kingston, Jamaica
Sunset
December 3, 2015, Kingston, Jamaica
Also recorded as
Gladdy's All Stars, Stranger & Gladdy

Gladstone Anderson, known as Gladdy, played piano on hundreds of Jamaican records and arranged a large share of them. David Katz called him "the unsung hero that put the meat onto what was typically brought to him as bare-bones song lyrics."

He was born in Jones Town and taught by his uncle Aubrey Adams, a pianist and bandleader who played with Clue J and His Blues Blasters. Before leaving Jamaica for Panama, Adams took his nephew to Duke Reid, who began using Anderson in his place at Treasure Isle. Anderson worked from the late 1950s for both Reid and Coxsone Dodd, playing alongside the musicians who later formed the Skatalites and generally taking the piano chair at Treasure Isle sessions where Jackie Mittoo took it at Studio One.

In 1966 he joined Lynn Taitt and the Jets, with Hux Brown on rhythm guitar, Bryan Atkinson on bass, Joe Isaacs on drums, and Headley Bennett on saxophone. At the Federal session for Hopeton Lewis's "Take It Easy," Lewis asked the band to slow the tempo, and Anderson is credited in several accounts with remarking that the result was rock steady. He also acted as the band's interpreter, since Taitt's Trinidadian accent gave the Kingston musicians trouble. He played on Roy Shirley's "Hold Them" and Alton Ellis's "Girl I've Got a Date," among the other founding rocksteady records.

He led Gladdy's All Stars, with Jackie Jackson on bass, Winston Grennan on drums, Hux Brown on guitar, and Winston Wright on organ. The same players recorded under different names for different producers, as Rupie's All Stars for Rupie Edwards, as the Crystalites for Derrick Harriott, and as the Dynamites for Clancy Eccles, which was standard practice in Kingston and makes session credits from the period close to unreliable.

From the late 1960s, Katz writes, singers came to him in the studio to find the right key, and he would "bash out some chord changes," setting the song's basic structure and melody. "When the singer comes to sing a song we would say, 'go over to the piano, go over to Gladdy,'" Jackie Jackson recalled. "Nine times out of 10, Gladdy is always the first one to catch a song." Derrick Harriott remembered him pressing the musicians "to keep the rhythm steady." Katz names "Return of Django," "The Liquidator," and "Israelites" among the British chart hits he arranged.

He also sang, recording with Stranger Cole as Stranger and Gladdy on "Just Like a River" and "Seeing Is Knowing," and as the Seraphines for Sonia Pottinger's Gayfeet label. His instrumental album It May Sound Silly (1972) sold heavily in Jamaica and set his piano against string arrangements. Later records include Gladdy Unlimited (1977), Peace Pipe Dub (1993), and a 1987 Tokyo concert with the Japanese dub band Mute Beat, issued as Gladdy Meets Mute Beat; Jay Z sampled his "Mad Mad Ivy" on "Already Home" (2009). He worked on Harry Mudie's In Conference series with King Tubby and played on John Holt's Time Is the Master, one of the first orchestrated reggae albums.

In the late 1970s he joined the Roots Radics, the band that grew out of the Morwells' backing group and became the standard rhythm section of early dancehall, playing on Barrington Levy's records for Henry "Junjo" Lawes. He had come from ska through rocksteady and roots into dancehall.

He departed in Kingston in December 2015 at eighty-one.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. The Rough Guide describes Duke Reid's early reggae records as made with "a line-up generally led by pianist Gladstone 'Gladdy' Anderson and often known as Gladdy's All Stars," and calls Anderson "the leader of" Harry Mudie's "excellent studio band." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 97, 112. Bradley says Lee Perry's session pool grew out of "the group pianist Gladstone Anderson used to organize for him." Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 227.
  2. David Katz, "Remembering 'Gladdy' Anderson, the Founding Father of Ska and Rocksteady," Fact, December 15, 2015, https://factmag.com/2015/12/15/gladdy-anderson.
  3. The Rough Guide names Anderson, "a nephew of the great Aubrey Adams," among Reid's regular Treasure Isle players. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 64. Wikipedia says he was taught piano at home by Adams and began working for Reid in the late 1950s. "Gladstone Anderson," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladstone_Anderson.
  4. Wikipedia says he generally replaced Mittoo when the Skatalites recorded at Treasure Isle, and also worked for Dodd and Leslie Kong. "Gladstone Anderson."
  5. The Rough Guide says that when Lewis recorded "Take It Easy" at Federal in late 1966, "he asked the band led by Lynn Taitt to play the rhythm slower, because he was having difficulty fitting the lyrics over the ska-style rhythm." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 63.
  6. The Rough Guide says Anderson "remarked on the 'rock steady' nature of the slowed-down rhythm" and that "the new name stuck." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 63. In Bradley, Bunny Lee says the name was already current for the dance in 1963 or 1964. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 161. Katz reports Hopeton Lewis saying Anderson coined the name on first hearing the playback. Katz, "Remembering 'Gladdy' Anderson."
  7. Wikipedia credits him on "Hold Them" and "Girl I've Got a Date." "Gladstone Anderson." Clancy Eccles names "Gladdy Anderson," with Ernest Ranglin, Jackie Jackson, Aubrey Adams, and Hux Brown, among the players at the late-1960s session where, he says, the beat changed "from rocksteady to reggae." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 109.
  8. Wikipedia gives this lineup. "Gladstone Anderson." The engineer Lynford Anderson told David Katz that "Gladdy's All Stars" played on his own productions: "Gladdy is on all of my songs." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 91. Bradley lists Winston Wright, Clifton "Jackie" Jackson, and the drummer Lloyd Adams as regulars in the group Anderson organized for Perry. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 227.
  9. The Rough Guide says Gladdy's All Stars also worked for Leslie Kong and Harry Mudie, and that Eccles's session band, the Dynamites, "became the Crystalites for Derrick Harriott." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 97, 109. Wikipedia lists the band's other names as the Aggrovators, Beverley's All Stars, Rupie's All Stars, the Crystalites, and the Dynamites. "Gladstone Anderson."
  10. Katz, "Remembering 'Gladdy' Anderson."
  11. Howard Campbell, "Unsung: Gladstone Anderson a Key Player!," Jamaica Observer, reposted on Clinton Lindsay, June 1, 2012, https://clintonlindsay.com/2012/06/01/unsung-gladstone-anderson-a-key-player, quoting Jackson's interview with David Katz.
  12. Howard Campbell, "All-Star Musician," Jamaica Observer, December 12, 2015, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2015/12/12/all-star-musician/.
  13. Katz, "Remembering 'Gladdy' Anderson."
  14. The Rough Guide calls the duo "the partnership of the already-established Stranger Cole and the keyboards player and sometime vocalist Gladstone Anderson," and calls the two songs "heartfelt." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 76.
  15. The Rough Guide says the album "was a reggae best-seller in 1972" and that "the combination of Gladdy Anderson's piano and strings" kept working for Jamaican audiences. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 112. It calls Mudie's use of strings, recorded in London, "the most daring of his innovations." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 112.
  16. Katz, "Remembering 'Gladdy' Anderson."
  17. The Rough Guide treats Holt's Time Is the Master as the classic example of Mudie's string arrangements, "lovers rock before the term was coined," and lists the In Dub Conference volumes with King Tubby. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 112, 231. Wikipedia dates Gladdy Unlimited to 1977 and Peace Pipe Dub to 1993. "Gladstone Anderson."
  18. The Rough Guide says the Roots Radics came together in 1978, "formed largely from former members of the Morwells," and lists their associated players without naming Anderson; it does name him on piano on some Radics-era sessions. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 212, 247, 249, 275. Wikipedia calls him "one of several keyboard players to play in the Roots Radics." "Gladstone Anderson." Katz calls the band "the most in-demand session group of the day." Katz, "Remembering 'Gladdy' Anderson."
  19. Wikipedia gives his dates as June 18, 1934, to December 3, 2015. "Gladstone Anderson."

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