Munchie Jackson
Producer. Reggae, roots
- Active
- 1970s
"Munchie" Jackson was a producer in New York in the 1970s, the early partner of Lloyd "Bullwackie" Barnes and, with his brother Scorcher, co-owner of the Tafari label, whose roots records the Rough Guide calls "never easy to find."
Barnes began producing in partnership with him in the early 1970s, and some of the first releases on Barnes's Aries label were produced between the two Jacksons and Barnes. With the singer Little Roy they launched the Tafari and Earth labels, where Little Roy's most consistent work appeared, among it "Tribal War," a plea for "love and a little harmony" that was soon covered by John Holt and others. Tafari also carried the Heptones' "Revolution" and "Forward on a Yard," Carl Dawkins's "Burnin' Fire" and the deejay Winston Scotland's "Zion Fever."
Around 1974, in David Katz's account, Tafari took older Jamaican rhythms, some of them Lee Perry's, to New York and had local deejays and players voice new material over them, the reverse of what Jah Life later did. Jackson also produced the New York roots singer John Clarke's "In Search of the Human Race" in the mid-1970s.
Last updated October 21, 2026
Connections
- The Heptones (artist)
- Little Roy (artist)
- Lloyd "Bullwackie" Barnes (collaborator)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 208.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 425. Saxon Baird, "Author David Katz on Wackies and the History of New York Reggae," Afropop Worldwide, September 26, 2013, https://afropop.org/articles/author-david-katz-on-wackies-and-the-history-of-new-york-reggae, quoting Katz.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 207-8.
- Baird, "Author David Katz on Wackies."
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 427.
