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 →

Hedley Jones

Engineer. Ska

Active
1940-2017
Sunrise
c. 1917, St. Catherine, Jamaica
Sunset
September 1, 2017, St. James, Jamaica

Hedley Jones was a musician, radio engineer and inventor who built Jamaica's first solid-body electric guitar and the amplifier that Tom the Great Sebastian called a "sound system."

Born in St. Catherine, at fourteen he built his own cello and banjos, and in 1935 he moved to Kingston, where he worked as a tailor, cabinet maker, bus conductor and proofreader while playing banjo in a local band and later leading the Hedley Jones Sextet. His solid-body electric guitar dated, by his account, from 1940, the same year as Les Paul's. In May 1943 he joined the Royal Air Force and was trained as a radar engineer, and on his return he opened a radio repair business in 1946 that became Hedley Jones' Radio Service, with a record department called Bop City.

He built his first amplifier by hand in 1947, and the one he built for Tom the Great Sebastian gave the business its name: "I built that amplifier for Tom. He promptly called it a Sound System." In 1963 he helped build Coxsone Dodd's Studio One, making its recording amplifiers, and he played guitar on sessions there. He also built the first set of traffic lights in Jamaica. He was vice-president of the Jamaica Federation of Musicians from 1968 to 1985 and its president from 1985 to 1995, and built telescopes through which he watched Halley's Comet in 1985. He received the Order of Distinction in 1993, the Gold Musgrave Medal and, in 2014, a lifetime achievement award from the Jamaica Reggae Industry Association, and departed at his home in St. James in 2017, at ninety-nine.

Last updated October 21, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Seb Carayol, "Hedley Jones: The Renaissance Man Who Pioneered Jamaican Soundsystem Culture," Red Bull Music Academy Daily, May 30, 2019, https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2019/05/hedley-jones-feature/, quoting Jones.
  2. Carayol, "Hedley Jones." On his birthplace, Simone Morgan-Lindo, "Pioneer Hedley Jones Is Dead," Jamaica Observer, September 3, 2017, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/entertainment/pioneer-hedley-jones-is-dead/, which calls him "St Catherine-born."
  3. Carayol, "Hedley Jones."
  4. Carayol, "Hedley Jones," quoting him: "On May 8th, 1943, I joined England's Royal Air Force."
  5. Carayol, "Hedley Jones," quoting him.
  6. Carayol, "Hedley Jones." Morgan-Lindo, "Pioneer Hedley Jones Is Dead," which also has him recording at Studio One "as a guitarist."
  7. Simone Morgan-Lindo, "Hedley Jones Seen as 'Wonder Man,'" Jamaica Observer, September 9, 2017, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2017/09/09/hedley-jones-seen-as-wonder-man/, quoting Olivia Grange.
  8. Morgan-Lindo, "Pioneer Hedley Jones Is Dead," on the Federation. Carayol, "Hedley Jones," which gives his death on September 1, 2017; in August 2016 he had said he was "99 days short of my 99th birthday."
  9. Morgan-Lindo, "Pioneer Hedley Jones Is Dead," quoting his son, Art Jones: "He was ninety-nine." Morgan-Lindo, "Hedley Jones Seen as 'Wonder Man.'"

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