King Stitt
Artist. Ska, reggae
- Active
- 1950s-2012
- Sunrise
- September 17, 1940, Kingston
- Sunset
- January 2012, Nannyville, St. Andrew
- Also known as
- The Ugly One, Winston Sparkes, Winston Spark, Winston George Sparkes
King Stitt, born Winston Sparkes, was a deejay on Coxsone Dodd's Downbeat sound system and, at the end of the 1960s, the first deejay to make records on more than an occasional basis.
He was a spectacular dancer, and Count Machuki, impressed by his dancing at Downbeat dances in the mid-1950s, took him on as his second, covering the microphone when Machuki wanted a break; it was the start of a lifelong partnership. By 1957 Dodd had three sets out, played by Machuki, Red Hopeton and Stitt. He made a virtue of his face, which had a malformation, and borrowed from Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to bill himself as "the Ugly One." Another deejay, Scotty, said people came "to see if he was really ugly."
Clancy Eccles recorded him from 1969 over the tough early reggae riddims of his band, the Dynamites. "Fire Corner" was one of the best-selling records of that year, and "Dance Beat," "Vigorton 2," "Herbman Shuffle" and "Lee Van Cleef" (also known as "The Ugly One") followed; the engineer Lynford Anderson can be heard alongside him on "Herbman Shuffle." These records became skinhead favorites in Britain. Bradley thought that neither Stitt nor Sir Lord Comic did quite enough to lift deejay records above novelties, and that Stitt's work with Eccles was fully appreciated only a quarter of a century later; the Rough Guide calls him "the equal of any deejay who followed."
He stayed close to Studio One for the rest of his life, and Dodd and others relied on his memory for who had sung what; he also recorded "Dance Hall '63" in the 1990s, toasting over old riddims in the style of the early sound systems. He fell ill after a tour of Brazil in 2011 and departed at his home in Nannyville, St. Andrew, a few months later.
Last updated October 23, 2026
Connections
- Clancy Eccles (producer)
- Count Machuki (mentor)
- Coxsone Dodd (sound system)
- U-Roy (same sound system)
- Don Drummond (collaborator)
- Lynford Anderson (collaborator)
- Studio One (workplace)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 16, 120. Bradley names him and Sir Lord Comic "the first deejays on wax." Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 294.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 16.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 120; "Toaster King Stitt Is Dead," Jamaica Observer, January 30, 2012, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2012/01/30/toaster-king-stitt-is-dead/.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 121.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 294; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 91 (Anderson's account), 120, 121. The Dynamites' Fire Corner album is dated 1969 on Discogs. "The Dynamites: Fire Corner," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/1679454-The-Dynamites-Fire-Corner. Katz says the 1968 session band of Jackie Jackson, Paul Douglas, Hux Brown, Dougie Bryan, Winston Wright, and Gladdy Anderson, known as the Dynamites when Eccles hired them, played on "Fire Corner." David Katz, "Jackie Jackson Obituary," Guardian, October 1, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/oct/01/jackie-jackson-obituary.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 108. Bradley lists "Herbman Shuffle" among the skinhead big sellers. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 242.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 294; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 121.
- "Toaster King Stitt Is Dead." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 27, 121 (a photograph of him "in the Studio One printery, 1994").
- "Toaster King Stitt Is Dead." The Observer says he died "yesterday," that is, January 29; Discogs gives January 31, 2012. "King Stitt," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/artist/162553-King-Stitt.
