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 →

Keith & Tex

Keith Rowe
Phillip "Tex" Dixon

Band. Rocksteady

Active
1967-1970, 1997-present
Also known as
Keith and Tex, Keith Rowe, Phillip "Tex" Dixon, Texas Dixon

Keith & Tex were the rocksteady duo of Keith Rowe and Phillip "Tex" Dixon, and for the Rough Guide a case in point of how Derrick Harriott brought out the best in the artists he worked with.

They began as a five-piece group that was whittled down to two. Finding Beverley's closed the day they went to audition, they took their tape to Harriott's shop instead, waited hours for him to return, and were booked for his next session. Their 1967 revival of the Spanishtonians' ska song "Stop That Train" was a Jamaican hit, and Scotty's toast over it, "Draw Your Brakes," reached the world on the soundtrack of The Harder They Come. The backing on "Stop That Train" came from the session players around Lynn Taitt and Jackie Jackson. "Tonight" was their other big hit; Studio One cut its own version of the riddim, and Harriott only ever had eight tracks by the pair, enough for one album.

They split in 1970. Rowe moved to the United States and served more than twenty years in the army, and Dixon went to Canada. He also sang in Britain, where Dennis Bovell's band Matumbi was formed in 1971 to back him; he was one of the original members who later left. Rowe also recorded solo for Lee Perry, a soulful cover of Gene Chandler's "Groovy Situation" at the Black Ark. The pair reunited in 1997 for a cassette-only album and in the 2010s found a new audience in Europe and the United States.

Last updated October 21, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 83, 84.
  2. Jacob Blickenstaff, "Contact: Jamaican Rocksteady Stars Keith & Tex," Mother Jones, January 20, 2014, https://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/01/keith-tex-jamaica-rocksteady-reggae/.
  3. Blickenstaff, "Keith & Tex." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 102; Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 284.
  4. Katz credits it in one obituary to Taitt "with his new group, the Jets," and in another to the session band of Jackson, the drummer Paul Douglas, the guitarists Hux Brown and Dougie Bryan, the organist Winston Wright, and Gladdy Anderson. David Katz, "Nearlin 'Lyn' Taitt Obituary," Guardian, February 10, 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/feb/10/nearlin-lynn-taitt-obituary; David Katz, "Jackie Jackson Obituary," Guardian, October 1, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/oct/01/jackie-jackson-obituary.
  5. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 84, 93, 231.
  6. Blickenstaff, "Keith & Tex."
  7. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 388.
  8. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 176.
  9. Blickenstaff, "Keith & Tex."

World of Jamaican Music: the whole map