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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King Jammy

Prince Jammy

Producer. Reggae, dancehall

Active
1985-present
Sunrise
October 26, 1947
Also known as
King Jammy's, Lloyd James

King Jammy (born Lloyd Woodrowe James) is the producer who took Jamaican music into the digital era, and the most consequential of the engineers King Tubby trained.

He was born and raised in Waterhouse, on the same street as Tubby. He built amplifiers and repaired equipment out of his mother's house through the late 1960s, ran his own sound system, and made equipment for other people's. In the early 1970s he went to Canada for several years, returning to Kingston in 1976 to set up a studio at his in-laws' house in Waterhouse, where his first releases were Yabby You productions. When Philip Smart left Tubby's team for New York, Jammy took his chair, and by 1977 he was mixing most of what came through the studio, including the dub side of Horace Andy's "In the Light." He recorded as Prince Jammy until the mid-1980s; the two names belong to one man.

His first substantial production of his own was Black Uhuru's debut, Love Crisis (1977). Through the late 1970s and early 1980s he produced Junior Reid, Half Pint, Sugar Minott, Johnny Clarke, Junior Delgado, and Johnny Osbourne, among others, and his studio moved to St. Lucia Road in Waterhouse. John Masouri says of his productions that "everything you hear in them is for real. There's no contrivance," and that he "gets the best out of his artists."

The break came in 1985. Wayne Smith and a friend had found a rhythm among the presets of a Casio MT-40, a small consumer keyboard, and brought it to Jammy, whose studio slowed it, reworked it, and voiced Smith over it as "Under Mi Sleng Teng." It was not the first record made with a drum machine, but it was the one that settled the argument: within months the studios had largely stopped hiring bands, and Sleng Teng itself has been versioned more than two hundred times. Jammy's studio became the center of the new dancehall, with a house band built around Steely and Clevie and a roster that ran through Tenor Saw, Nitty Gritty, Admiral Bailey, Josey Wales, Cocoa Tea, Shabba Ranks, and Ninjaman, and Bobby Digital serving his apprenticeship there before setting up on his own.

His sound system, Super Power, rose with the studio: it made its mark in the early 1980s, and it was at a clash with Black Scorpio on Waltham Park Road on February 23, 1985, that "Sleng Teng" was first played to its full effect. Admiral Bailey, Major Worries, Chaka Demus, Nicodemus, and Shabba Ranks were among the deejays who worked it. At the "Shock of the Century" clash that June, Masouri writes, Super Power "destroyed all-comers," and Jammy was crowned king. He has continued to produce, and to release dub, into his seventies, and his sons have carried the studio forward.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Bradley traces the line: "Jammy's apprenticed under Tubby; Bobby learned his trade from Jammy's." Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 524-25. The Rough Guide calls dub's loss, when Jammy became "Jamaica's most successful producer," the gain of the singers and studio owners who "followed his lead into the digital era." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 237.
  2. The Rough Guide places his studio "in his house at 38 St Lucia Road (just around the corner from where he was born)." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 271. Wikipedia gives Montego Bay as his birthplace, without a citation. "King Jammy," Wikipedia, accessed October 2, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Jammy.
  3. The Rough Guide says he began "in the late 1960s when he built amplifiers for sound systems, a prelude to running his own system." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 237. Wikipedia, citing Colin Larkin, adds that he worked from his mother's house in Waterhouse. "King Jammy."
  4. The Rough Guide says he had lived in Canada "since the early 1970s," came home for a holiday in 1976, and was persuaded by Bunny Lee to stay; in 1976 he "released a couple of Vivian Jackson productions." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 237, 271. The in-laws' house is from Wikipedia, citing Larkin. "King Jammy."
  5. The Rough Guide says Tubby's main engineer, Phillip Smart, was "emigrating to New York," that Jammy "mixed most of Bunny Lee and Yabby You's productions from 1977," and that his dub albums included Horace Andy's In the Light Dub. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 237.
  6. The Rough Guide: "Jammy was not to change his title until a couple of years after the digital revolution he initiated." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 272.
  7. The Rough Guide says he sold "the debut Black Uhuru album to the UK Third World label in the winter of 1977." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 271.
  8. The Rough Guide names Half Pint, Junior Reid, Johnny Osbourne, Sugar Minott, and Dennis Brown among his early-1980s singers. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 271-72.
  9. John Masouri, "King Jammys: Roots, Reality and Sleng Teng," John Masouri, November 17, 2016, https://www.johnmasouri.com/single-post/2016/11/17/king-jammys-roots-reality-and-sleng-teng.
  10. In Bobby Digital's account to Bradley, the singer and musician Noel Davey "had the computer box," and the studio "took down the speeds" of its built-in beat "to what was closest to a reggae tempo." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 522-23. The Rough Guide gives Noel Bailey, citing Beth Lesser, or alternatively Tony Asher, and says the rhythm "was then slowed down and re-recorded by Asher at Jammy's studio." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 295. Katz names Noel Davey, who had a Casiotone MT-40, and its "rock'n'roll" preset, and quotes Jammy: "It was too fast ... I slowed it down to dancing mode, then we overdubbed some piano and percussion." David Katz, "Wayne Smith's Under Mi Sleng Teng: The Song That Revolutionised Reggae," Guardian, February 20, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/feb/20/wayne-smith-sleng-teng-revolutionised-dancehall-reggae.
  11. The Rough Guide dates "the first fully digital rhythm" to the beginning of 1985, treats Sly and Robbie's "robotic" sound and the Blood Fire Posse's "semi-computerized hits of 1984" as precursors, and says versions "followed by the trailerload" while producers "jettisoned most of the non-digital rhythms they had stockpiled." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 295. Katz counts "more than 200 versions." Katz, "Wayne Smith's Under Mi Sleng Teng."
  12. The Rough Guide names Bobby Digital and Squingy Francis as mixers, Mikey Bennett as arranger, and Steely, Clevie, and Dean Fraser as musicians, and says Bobby Digital and Steely and Clevie both left to form their own labels in 1988. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 297. It covers Admiral Bailey, Josey Wales, and Cocoa Tea at Jammy's, and Shabba Ranks's first album for him, in 1989. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 272, 301, 328.
  13. The Rough Guide says his sound system and label "really made an impact" at the beginning of the 1980s, that by the end of 1984 he was "ruling on both sound system and record," and that "Sleng Teng" was played "at the historic sound clash between Prince Jammy and Black Scorpio at Waltham Park Road on February 23, 1985." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 271, 272, 295. It names Admiral Bailey and Major Worries among the "Super Power deejays," Chaka Demus as Shabba's "colleague at Jammy's unassailable sound system," and Nicodemus as having "once worked on Jammy's sound system." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 301, 328, 434. Bobby Digital told Bradley that Jammy took "Sleng Teng" to his sound "either that night or in the next day or so, and it mash the place up." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 523.
  14. Masouri, "King Jammys."

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