World of Jamaican Music

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I-Roy

Artist. Reggae

Active
1972-1999
Sunrise
June 28, 1944, St. Thomas, Jamaica
Sunset
November 27, 1999
Also known as
The Godfather

Roy Samuel Reid, known as I-Roy, was a Jamaican deejay whose recorded output across the 1970s was among the largest of any toaster of the period, and whom Harry Hawks calls "Jamaica's most articulate and intelligent deejay." Behind rants that sounded spontaneous, Hawks says, lay "endless thought," with lyrics that ran from Black Panther leaders to Alfred Hitchcock. Harry Mudie called him "Jamaica's greatest deejay."

He was born in Saint Thomas and educated at Dinthill Technical College, and he worked as a government accountant while running his own sound system, Soul Bunny, from 1968, setting it up at Victoria Pier on Wednesday afternoons. He moved on to Son's Junior in Spanish Town, where the producer Harry Mudie heard him, renamed him I-Roy, and recorded four sides with him around 1970, among them "The Drifter" and "Heart Don't Leap," both cut in combination with Dennis Walks. Reid and Mudie fell out over the terms of a proposed European tour. He then worked Ruddy Redwood's Supreme Ruler of Sound, Seymour Williams's Stereo, and V Rocket before joining King Tubby's Home Town Hi-Fi in Waterhouse in mid-1972, taking the microphone there while U-Roy was touring Britain.

His records were made for a wide spread of producers: Ruddy Redwood ("Sidewalk Killer," 1972, a version of Tommy McCook's "Sidewalk Doctor"), Bunny Lee, Derrick Harriott, Lee Perry, Glen Brown, Rupie Edwards, Byron Lee, Keith Hudson, Lloyd Campbell, and Alvin Ranglin. The most productive of these was with Gussie Clarke, who produced most of the debut album, Presenting I Roy (1973). A second album, Hell and Sorrow, was largely self-produced and sold well enough in Britain that Reid relocated there to promote The Many Moods of I-Roy (1974), appearing regularly with Sir Coxsone's sound system at the Roaring Twenties and playing live dates backed by Matumbi. Back in Jamaica he cut the album Truth and Rights for Pete Weston, and from 1975 he worked as house producer at Channel One, behind some of the biggest hits by the Mighty Diamonds and the Revolutionaries, though the credit generally went to the studio's owners. "Welding," cut there, was among his largest hits of the period.

From 1975 he and Prince Jazzbo traded insults across a run of singles, which began when Bunny Lee released a remark Reid had made during a voice test as "Straight to Prince Jazzbo's Head" and then encouraged a reply. Derrick Morgan was drawn in as well. Reid said afterward that he had taken the exchange as a joke and Jazzbo had not; by most accounts the two were friends throughout.

Virgin signed him in 1976 and issued a long run of albums through its Front Line label, voiced for the most part over Revolutionaries riddims; African Herbsman (1979) was made under Errol Thompson's direction. The arrival of dancehall narrowed his audience in the 1980s, though he continued to record and to run his own Turbotronic sound system, and the twelve-inch "Two Big Sounds" describes a clash between Turbotronic and U-Roy's Sturgav. Health and money problems followed, and he spent periods homeless. A studio he began building in Spanish Town in the early 1990s was never finished. The life of one of his two sons was taken in prison in October 1999, and Reid departed soon after learning of it, of a heart attack at fifty-five. It was I-Roy's verbal artistry that Linton Kwesi Johnson had in mind when he first spoke of "dub poetry." Johnson salutes him by name in "Street 66," on Bass Culture (1980).

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. The Rough Guide calls him "the music's premier lyricist" and "always the most erudite deejay," whose records referred to "Mickey Spillane, Alfred Hitchcock, Stokely Carmichael, Florence Nightingale and Cleopatra." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 126.
  2. Harry Hawks, "I Roy," Reggae Record, accessed November 5, 2026, https://www.reggaerecord.com/en/content/featured_artist.php?id=628.
  3. Hawks, "I Roy."
  4. Wikipedia attributes the Dinthill, accountancy, and Soul Bunny details to Dave Thompson's Reggae & Caribbean Music. "I-Roy," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Roy. Katz says he was a civil servant in Kingston when he began toasting in 1966. David Katz, "I-Roy," Guardian, January 26, 2000, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/jan/26/guardianobituaries.
  5. The Rough Guide says I-Roy arrived around 1970, "two years earlier" than Big Youth's first records, "with 'Musical Pleasure' and 'Drifter' for Harry Mudie," and calls "Musical Pleasure" his debut disc. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 112, 126. Wikipedia, citing Thompson, dates the four Mudie sides to 1971. "I-Roy."
  6. Wikipedia cites Thompson for the dispute over the tour. "I-Roy."
  7. The Rough Guide lists Son's Junior, Stereo, and Ruddy's Supreme among the Spanish Town sound systems he worked, then V-Rocket and King Tubby's Hi-Fi, where he deejayed "when U-Roy was not available." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 126, 229.
  8. The Rough Guide names Keith Hudson and Bunny Lee among his producers; Bradley says he "stepped up a gear" with Gussie Clarke. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 118, 154; Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 304. Wikipedia credits "Sidewalk Killer" to Ruddy Redwood and lists the others. "I-Roy."
  9. The Rough Guide says Clarke produced I-Roy's debut set, "comparable in terms of its mould-shattering quality" to Big Youth's Screaming Target, with "Blackman Time" as "the enormous hit," and calls Hell & Sorrow a self-production. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 127.
  10. Katz says he spent "many months in London in 1973" at the Roaring 20s with Sir Coxsone's sound system, and played British dates with Matumbi after Many Moods came out in 1974. Katz, "I-Roy."
  11. The Rough Guide says I-Roy "became unofficial house producer at Channel One," encouraged the Hookims to study Tubby's studio, and helped prompt Sly Dunbar's "clap" snare. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 229. Katz dates his in-house role to 1975, after the Truth and Rights album for Pete Weston, and credits it with "some of the biggest hits by the Mighty Diamonds and Revolutionaries." Katz, "I-Roy."
  12. The Rough Guide says "Welding" was "one of the first records with the distinct 'clap' sound" and "an important hit for the outfit" in the summer of 1975. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 156.
  13. The Rough Guide says the 1975 feud "began with the former's 'Straight To Jazzbo's Head'" on Bunny Lee's label and continued through "Straight To I-Roy's Head," "Jazzbo Have Fe Run," "Gal Boy I Roy," and "Pad Lock." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 154.
  14. The Rough Guide says "the two rivals apparently remained friends away from the mike." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 154.
  15. Katz says he signed a five-album contract with Virgin in 1976, with "tight Revolutionaries rhythms," and calls Heart of a Lion the most inspired; he says African Herbsman (1979) was "recorded under Errol Thompson's direction." Katz, "I-Roy."
  16. Katz says that after his popularity faded his health and finances declined and he was "apparently homeless" at the end. Katz, "I-Roy."
  17. Katz says that in the early 1990s he devoted himself to building a studio in Spanish Town, which "never opened." Katz, "I-Roy."
  18. Katz says he died of a heart attack at fifty-five and that he "succumbed after learning of the violent death of an incarcerated son." Katz, "I-Roy." Katz gives the date as November 29, 1999; the National Library of Jamaica gives November 27, "in hospital," and Wikipedia, citing Dave Thompson and others, November 27 at Spanish Town Hospital. "I-Roy (1949-1999)," National Library of Jamaica, accessed October 21, 2026, https://nlj.gov.jm/REGGAE%20EXHIBITION/I-Roy.htm; "I-Roy."
  19. Katz, "I-Roy."

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