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 →

Glen Brown

Producer. Rocksteady, reggae, dub

Active
1960s-2000s
Sunrise
c. 1944, Kingston
Sunset
October 4, 2019, Far Rockaway, New York
Also known as
God Son, Rhythm Master, Glenmore Brown, Glenmore Lloyd Brown

Glen Brown, the "God Son" and "Rhythm Master," was a singer who became one of the most individual producers of early 1970s reggae. His records were pressed in tiny numbers and seldom hit, but their riddims, and the dubs King Tubby mixed from them, made him a cult figure.

He started as a vocalist with Sonny Bradshaw's jazz group, singing standards on the North Coast hotel circuit, and then cut duets with Hopeton Lewis, Lloyd Robinson and Dave Barker, for producers including Duke Reid and Derrick Harriott. Barker recalled the night at Randy's when a Lee Perry session was going nowhere and Brown, in the control room, told Perry to "try Dave"; the result was Barker's hit "Prisoner of Love."

Brown first produced on the Shalimar label, in partnership with the businessman M. G. Mahtani, and in 1972 started his own Pantomine and Dwyer labels, working out of whatever premises he could: some labels give the address of a used-car lot. Pressings were small and labels were often reused. "Merry Up," a melodica duet with Joe White, was his first big local hit, and he went back to its riddim again and again; "Dirty Harry," a horns workout by Tommy McCook and Richard Hall, gave Hall his nickname. He drew tough riddims from the In Crowd and Soul Syndicate bands and voiced them with singers (Gregory Isaacs's "One One Cocoa Fill Basket," Roman Stewart's "Never Too Young," Lloyd Parks's "Slaving," Little Roy's "Father's Call") and above all with deejays: I-Roy, Big Youth, U-Roy ("Number One in the World") and Prince Jazzbo ("Mr. Harry Skank"). He left his tapes with King Tubby asking for "five or six styles" of each, and his "Tubby's at the Control" (1972) was the first record to credit Tubby by name. David Katz hears a "jazz sensibility" running through the work, in backing tracks that are "totally non-standard," with "off-tempo floor toms" and wandering keyboard lines, and in Brown's own "wicked and wild melodica abstractions."

He launched a second label, South East Music, in 1975, and in the roots years turned to vocals. The young Sylford Walker cut an album's worth of sides for him, among them "Lamb's Bread," and the riddim best known from Wayne Jarrett's "Youthman" and Glenroy Richards's "Wicked Can't Run Away" proved his most enduring. Musicians he helped along, among them Sugar Minott, called him God Son.

In later years he divided his time between Jamaica, New York and Britain. He spent about nine years in a nursing home in New York with renal failure and dementia, and departed there on October 4, 2019, aged seventy-five.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. The Rough Guide calls him "even more left-field" than Keith Hudson, notes that he "had barely a handful of hits in Jamaica" because "he rarely had enough money to press large runs," and says "the scarcity of his discs ensured that he became a cult figure." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 119. The Gleaner gives his name as Glenmore Brown, his age at death as seventy-five and both nicknames. "‘Rhythm Master’ Glen Brown Has Died," Jamaica Gleaner, October 5, 2019, https://past.jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20191005/rhythm-master-glen-brown-has-died.
  2. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 119. Duke Reid and Derrick Harriott, and the name of Bradshaw's group (the Sonny Bradshaw Seven), are from his daughter Rosemarie Macklin in "‘Rhythm Master’ Glen Brown Has Died."
  3. Dave Barker's account in Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 340.
  4. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 119.
  5. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 119. Discogs lists "Merry Up" on Pantomine and the "Dirty Harry" single, credited to the God Childrens, both in 1972. "Glen Brown / Bongo Herman: Merry Up / God Step," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/3736704-Glen-Brown-Bongo-Herman-Merry-Up-God-Step; "God Childrens: Dirty Harry / Scatta Light Rock," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/2676595-God-Childrens-Dirty-Harry-Scatta-Light-Rock.
  6. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 119, 120. Bradley names "Dirty Harry" and Sylford Walker's "Lamb's Bread" among the Pantomine and South East Music records "better remembered for quality than quantity." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 365.
  7. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 119.
  8. David Katz, "A Beginner's Guide to Glen Brown," Fact, October 20, 2015, https://factmag.com/2015/10/20/glen-brown-beginners-guide.
  9. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 180, 181.
  10. The Rough Guide calls him "the self-styled God Son." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 119. His daughter says the name was given to him by musicians he mentored, "including Sugar Minott, General Lee, and Joseph Cotton," and that "Rhythm Master" dates from the 1960s. "‘Rhythm Master’ Glen Brown Has Died."
  11. "‘Rhythm Master’ Glen Brown Has Died." His time between Jamaica, New York and Britain is from Mr. T, "Glen Brown: The Rhythm Master (1944-2019)," Reggae Vibes, October 5, 2019, https://www.reggae-vibes.com/articles/2019/10/glen-brown-the-rhythm-master-1944-2019/.

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