Graeme Goodall
Engineer. Ska, rocksteady, reggae
- Active
- 1955-1970s
- Sunrise
- 1932, Melbourne, Australia
- Sunset
- December 2014, Atlanta, Georgia
- Also known as
- Mr Goody, Graeme Goodhall, Doctor Bird, Pyramid, Rio
Graeme Goodall was an Australian engineer who worked in Jamaica for years, engineered practically all of Coxsone Dodd's recordings before Studio One opened, and then helped carry Jamaican music to Britain on his own labels.
He came to Jamaica in the mid-1950s to install Radio Jamaica Rediffusion's FM service, helped Ken Khouri set up his first recording equipment in 1955, and returned to help establish the JBC. He arranged for Chris Blackwell to record Laurel Aitken's "Boogie in My Bones" at RJR in 1959, engineered Blackwell's early productions, and became a partner in Island with Blackwell and Leslie Kong. In 1961 he became chief engineer at Federal, where, as Bradley puts it, he worked with all of Jamaica's top boogie and ska producers. Watching a sound system dance, David Katz writes, he grasped "the primacy of the bass in sound system culture," and it changed how he recorded there. He was the first engineer at the WIRL studio, where he taught Lynford Anderson the two-track Ampex board, and he also trained Sylvan Morris and Byron Smith.
In London he started the Rio label, known for Errol Dunkley's early records, Laurel Aitken and Studio One licenses. His Doctor Bird group, founded in 1965, moved into rocksteady and reggae with the Doctor Bird, Pyramid, JJ and Attack labels. Pyramid, a partnership with Kong, had Desmond Dekker's "007 (Shanty Town)" in 1967 and "Israelites," which Goodall remixed for radio after the BBC rejected it for its sound quality; it became the first reggae number one in Britain. He later worked at Dynamic Sound and for Sony in the United States, and departed in Atlanta in 2014.
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Coxsone Dodd (producer)
- Sylvan Morris (apprentice)
- Lynford Anderson (apprentice)
- Leslie Kong (collaborator)
- Chris Blackwell (collaborator)
- Desmond Dekker (collaborator)
- Laurel Aitken (collaborator)
- Errol Dunkley (collaborator)
- Stanley Motta (collaborator)
- Dynamic Sounds (workplace)
- Federal Records (workplace)
Notes
- Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 129.
- David Katz, "Goody Gone: In Memory of Graeme Goodall," Red Bull Music Academy Daily, December 8, 2014, https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2014/12/graeme-goodall-rip.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 129; Katz, "Goody Gone."
- Katz, "Goody Gone."
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 82, 91; Katz, "Goody Gone."
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 129; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 385. Bradley says Goodall came to England in 1962; Katz says he helped move Island to London that year and formed Doctor Bird in 1965. Katz, "Goody Gone."
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 240; Katz, "Goody Gone."
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 241; Katz, "Goody Gone."
- Katz, "Goody Gone." Augustyn, who interviewed him several times, gives his birth in Melbourne in 1932 and his death on December 3, 2014, at eighty-two. Heather Augustyn, "Goodbye Mr. Goody," SkaBook (blog), December 4, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/12/04/goodbye-mr-goody/. Goodall also told her that he vouched for Prince Buster at Federal when Khouri wanted to bar him for unpaid bills. Heather Augustyn, "Prince Buster and Federal Records," SkaBook (blog), April 25, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/04/25/prince-buster-federal-records/.
