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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Harry Mudie

Producer. Ska, reggae, dub

Active
1950s-1980s
Sunrise
1940, Spanish Town
Also known as
Harry A. Mudie, Mudies All Stars, Mudie's All Stars

Harry Mudie, born in Spanish Town in 1940, made what the Rough Guide calls the most refined productions of early reggae and was, by his own account, the first to put a live string section on a reggae record.

A past student of St. Jago High School and a nephew of the West Indies cricketer George Mudie, he ran a sound system, Mudies Hi-Fi, after leaving school in the late 1950s. He was among the first to record the Rasta drummer Count Ossie, cutting "Babylon Gone" and "So Long" with him, before going to England to study electronics and photography; Prince Buster later remarked that Mudie "made a ton of records with Ossie and his men, but none of them hit."

He produced only occasionally for a decade, then regularly from the end of the 1960s, when Trojan and then R&B set up labels in Britain for his records. On his Moodisc label he recorded a small circle of careful vocalists: the Ebony Sisters' "Let Me Tell You Boy," his first release; Dennis Walks's "Drifter," much versioned since; Lloyd Jones's "Rome"; the Eternals with Cornell Campbell; Winston Shand's "Time Is the Master"; the Heptones and Joe White. His studio band, Mudies All Stars, was led by the pianist Gladstone Anderson and included the vibraphonist Lennie Hibbert, Tommy McCook, Bobby Ellis and the percussionist Bongo Herman; Jo Jo Bennett was his regular horn player, and I-Roy made his debut, Musical Pleasure, for him.

Mudie dated the first reggae records with live strings to a session at Chalk Farm Studios in London on May 2, 1970, which produced Jo Jo Bennett's "Leaving Rome"; John Holt's "It May Sound Silly" followed in 1971 and led to Holt's best-selling Time Is the Master album. He fought piracy of his biggest records in England. In the mid-1970s he had King Tubby remix his riddims for the three In Dub Conference albums, which the Rough Guide ranks among the most thoughtfully mixed dub albums ever made. In the 1980s he moved to Miami.

Last updated October 23, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 111, which calls him "under-celebrated." Barrow and Dalton name him among the producers of "the most refined early reggae productions." On strings: "Harry Mudie: Pulling Strings for Reggae," Jamaica Observer, January 12, 2013, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2013/01/12/harry-mudie-pulling-strings-for-reggae/.
  2. "Harry Mudie: Pulling Strings for Reggae."
  3. "Harry Mudie: Pulling Strings for Reggae." Prince Buster's comment is in Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 61. The Rough Guide notes "Babylon Gone" as one of a handful of sides Mudie had recorded with Count Ossie in the early 1960s. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 112.
  4. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 112.
  5. "Harry Mudie: Pulling Strings for Reggae." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 112.
  6. "Harry Mudie: Pulling Strings for Reggae." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 112.
  7. "Harry Mudie: Pulling Strings for Reggae." The Rough Guide says the strings were "recorded in London" and calls Time Is the Master "a reggae best-seller in 1972." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 112.
  8. "Harry Mudie: Pulling Strings for Reggae."
  9. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 231. Bradley also notes the series. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 323. The first volume is dated 1976 on Discogs. "Harry Mudie Meet King Tubby's: In Dub Conference Volume One," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/4307350-Harry-Mudie-Meet-King-Tubbys-In-Dub-Conference-Volume-One.
  10. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 498.

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