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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Lone Ranger

Artist. Dancehall, reggae

Active
1970s-present
Sunrise
1958, Kingston
Also known as
the Masked Stranger, Jah Waldron, Anthony Waldron, Anthony Alphanso Waldron, The Lone Ranger

The Lone Ranger (Anthony Waldron) was the deejay who led the move from the cultural chanting of the mid-1970s to dancehall chat. In the Rough Guide's words, "no performer was more responsible for ushering in the new era," and it rates him as arguably more talented than Yellowman, who followed him to the top.

He was born in Kingston and was sent for by his mother, a nurse, in 1963, growing up in Tottenham, North London, until the family sailed home in 1971. Back in Kingston he spent his lunch money on U-Roy and Big Youth records and practiced over the versions. As Jah Waldron he worked East Kingston's Soul Express sound with his friend Carlton Livingston, and he took his name in a clash, answering Clint Eastwood's boast: "badder than Dillinger, tougher than Clint Eastwood, harder than Trinity." He also sang with Chester Synmoie in a group, the I-Fenders, which recorded for Channel One.

His first records were for Studio One. "The Answer," his version of Slim Smith's "Never Let Go," gave that much-recorded riddim its usual name, and "Three Mile Skank" and "Chase Them Crazy," with Welton Irie, followed. The breakthrough came in 1980, the year his sound, Virgo Hi-Fi, was voted the best in Jamaica: "Barnabus Collins," produced by Leon Synmoie and issued on Alvin Ranglin's GG label, a vampire tale borrowed from the American soap Dark Shadows, reached number one in Jamaica and on the British reggae chart. It also revived the riddim of Slim Smith's "My Conversation." Back at Studio One, "Love Bump" (over "Rougher Yet"), "Natty Chalwa" and "Tribute to Marley" were built around the oinks, bims and ribbits that every deejay copied for the next couple of years; he said they simply came to him on the mic. Other hits included "Fort X" for Ranglin, "Rose Marie" for Winston Riley, and "M16" and "Fist to Fist Days Done" for Channel One over Niney's riddims.

Bradley hears a British style in him ("I have the English accent and when I speak you can hear every word I am saying clearly," he said), and his influence on British deejays was, the Rough Guide says, incalculable. He moved to New York in 1981 to tour North America, settled there, and came back to Jamaica in the late 1990s, later recording with European producers.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 248, 255-56.
  2. Angus Taylor, "Lone Ranger Interview: From Studio 1 to Sunsplash," Reggaeville, April 3, 2020, https://www.reggaeville.com/artist-details/lone-ranger/news/view/lone-ranger-interview-from-studio-1-to-sunsplash/. The Rough Guide names Virgo Hi-Fi as his sound, and Bradley says he "deejayed on Virgo HiFi." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 255; Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 505.
  3. Taylor, "Lone Ranger Interview."
  4. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 255, 262; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 224, 505. Lone Ranger says Coxsone Dodd let him pick rare Studio One rhythms that deejays were not riding. Taylor, "Lone Ranger Interview."
  5. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 255, 261. Lone Ranger dates the record to 1979 and says Ranglin was its distributor, not its producer; he credits the idea to the deejay John Steele. Taylor, "Lone Ranger Interview."
  6. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 255; Taylor, "Lone Ranger Interview." Bradley: "the trend for rrribbit, bim and oink as lyrical punctuation is widely believed to have started with Lone Ranger." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 505.
  7. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 255-57, 282.
  8. Angus Taylor, "Lone Ranger Interview: From Studio 1 to Sunsplash," Reggaeville, April 3, 2020, https://reggaeville.com/artist-details/lone-ranger/news/view/lone-ranger-interview-from-studio-1-to-sunsplash.
  9. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 480, 505-6; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 256. Bradley ties his style to British sound-system chatting, though he notes the view that the fast style came to Britain with Ranking Joe.
  10. Taylor, "Lone Ranger Interview." He gives the date of the move as September 17, 1981.

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