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 →

Jackie Mittoo

Artist. Ska, rocksteady, reggae

Active
1963-1990
Sunrise
March 3, 1948, Brown's Town, St. Ann, Jamaica
Sunset
December 16, 1990, Toronto, Canada (cancer)

Donat Roy Mittoo was a keyboard player, arranger, and musical director, and the central instrumental figure at Studio One during its most productive years.

He was born in Brown's Town, St. Ann, and raised partly in York Castle. His grandmother, a music teacher, started him on classical piano as a small child, and by his early teens he was leading his own band. After the family moved to Kingston he played briefly with the Rivals and then the Sheiks, several of whose members went on to the Skatalites; he was a founder member of that band in his mid-teens. When the Skatalites broke up in 1965 he formed the Soul Brothers, which became the Soul Vendors and later the Sound Dimension.

As Studio One's musical director from the mid-1960s he did much of the work a producer would have done elsewhere, setting bass lines, writing chord charts, and arranging sessions, while Coxsone Dodd handled the business. With Gladstone Anderson and Winston Wright he established the organ as a fixture of the reggae rhythm section, and Bradley names him and Wright the "style leaders" on the instrument as reggae arrived, when organ and bass were "the two most important instruments in the new style." Most of the singers who recorded at Brentford Road between 1965 and 1968 worked over his arrangements, among them Alton Ellis, Ken Boothe, Marcia Griffiths, the Heptones, the Ethiopians, and the Wailers. He encouraged Leroy Sibbles to take up the bass, and Sibbles eventually displaced him as the man in charge of the music.

His instrumentals, among them "Ram Jam," "Darker Shade of Black," "Oboe," and "Wall Street," became riddims that other producers versioned for decades. "Ram Jam" takes its name from the Brixton club where the Soul Vendors played during their British tour.

Mittoo emigrated to Toronto in 1968 and settled there, returning to Jamaica to record. In Canada he cut "Wishbone" for the Summus label, an orchestrated record closer to American soul than to reggae. He continued issuing albums through the 1970s for Bunny Lee and others, played additional keyboards on UB40's Labour of Love (1983), and lived to see "Free Soul," recorded with the Soul Brothers in 1966, sampled on Lily Allen's "Smile" in 2006.

He joined the reformed Skatalites in 1989. He entered hospital on December 12, 1990, and departed four days later in Toronto, at forty-two; the cause was cancer. He was buried in Kingston after a funeral at the National Arena on January 2, 1991.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. The Rough Guide says his "importance to Jamaican music cannot be overstated," both "as a virtuoso keyboards player and the arranger on countless sessions." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 96.
  2. Wikipedia, citing Colin Larkin's Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, gives Brown's Town and says his grandmother taught him piano from the age of three. "Jackie Mittoo," Wikipedia, accessed October 2, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Mittoo. The Rough Guide gives his birthplace as Kingston. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 68.
  3. In the Rough Guide, Tommy McCook names Mittoo among the Cavaliers players picked to found the Skatalites, and the book says the band "were officially formed in June 1964." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 25, 37, 42. Bradley dates the band to 1963 and notes that Mittoo "didn't turn sixteen until 1964." Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 94, 100, 102.
  4. The Rough Guide dates the Skatalites' farewell show to shortly after Independence Day 1965, and lists Mittoo's session bands as running "from the Soul Brothers through the Soul Vendors to the Sound Dimension." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 42, 96.
  5. Bradley calls him, at twenty, "Coxsone's resident musical arranger/talent scout," and says Dodd kept his musical directors on wages and relied "mostly" on Sibbles or Mittoo to choose acts at auditions. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 201, 212, 215.
  6. Bradley names Mittoo and Winston Wright as the style leaders of the "shuffle organ" in the first reggae records. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 201.
  7. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 201, 212.
  8. The Rough Guide says Studio One's rocksteady recordings came "largely under the supervision of organist/pianist Jackie Mittoo," credits him with the arrangement of Delroy Wilson's "Dancing Mood," and notes that Bob Andy rated him among the most important figures in reggae's evolution. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 68, 69, 78.
  9. Bradley: "When the bass began to assume a greater importance than the organ, Leroy Sibbles edged Jackie Mittoo to one side as the man in charge of the music at Studio One." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 215. The Rough Guide says Sibbles first played bass in a jazz trio led by Mittoo in early 1967. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 68.
  10. The Rough Guide calls "Ram Jam" a version of the Heptones' "Fattie Fattie," names "Darker Shade Of Black" as a Soul Vendors/Mittoo instrumental, traces later cuts of his "Drum Song" and "One Step Beyond," and notes that Augustus Pablo's early releases were mostly reworkings of Mittoo and Soul Vendors instrumentals. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 97, 75, 74, 167.
  11. The Rough Guide says he "first left for Toronto in 1968." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 96. Bradley says that by 1973 Mittoo "was in the departure lounge" at Studio One and had gone by the middle of the decade. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 348, 224.
  12. Wikipedia says "Wishbone" was a hit in 1971. "Jackie Mittoo."
  13. Wikipedia says he recorded mostly for Bunny Lee in the 1970s and that "Free Soul" (1966) was interpolated in "Smile." "Jackie Mittoo." Discogs credits him with keyboards on Labour of Love. "UB40: Labour of Love," Discogs, accessed October 2, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/552230.
  14. Wikipedia. "Jackie Mittoo."

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