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 →

Ossie Hibbert

Producer. Reggae, dub, dancehall

Active
1968-2012
Sunrise
January 16, 1951, Kingston
Sunset
July 1, 2012, New York
Also known as
Oswald Hibbert

Ossie Hibbert was a keyboard player, arranger, engineer and producer who worked at the center of the 1970s Kingston studios: in the Revolutionaries at Channel One, in Joe Gibbs's Professionals and in Bunny Lee's Aggrovators.

He grew up in Jones Town, learned piano as a child, and by the late 1960s was playing in the house band at the Stables club on Red Hills Road with his childhood friend Lloyd Parks. Bunny Lee was the first producer to use him in the studio. His break as a session player came with his keyboards on Big Youth's "S.90 Skank" for Keith Hudson in 1972, after which he played with the Soul Syndicate on Bunny Lee's and Niney's sessions.

Early in 1975 he joined Joseph and Ernest Hoo Kim at Channel One, as one of the Revolutionaries with Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare and then as an in-house producer, engineer and talent scout; with I-Roy he had a considerable influence on the studio's sound. Ernest Hoo Kim taught him the mixing desk, and the first record he engineered was the Revolutionaries' "MPLA." He also helped run and arrange sessions at Joe Gibbs's studio for Errol Thompson, and produced the dub album Earthquake Dub, which he gave Gibbs, by his own account, in exchange for a car.

On his own Earthquake and Ossie labels he produced Freddy McKay's Creation, Gregory Isaacs's album Mr. Isaacs (1978) and the twelve-inch "Mr. Know It All," as well as his own dub albums Crueshal Dub (1976) and Satisfaction in Dub (1978). Later he produced Errol Dunkley's British hit "OK Fred" and was the first to pair Chaka Demus and Pliers on record. He departed in New York, aged sixty-one, after attending a concert in Brooklyn; the cause was a heart attack.

Last updated October 15, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. "Musician Ossie Hibbert Dies in NY," Jamaica Observer, July 7, 2012, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2012/07/07/musician-ossie-hibbert-dies-in-ny/. Bradley lists him among the Revolutionaries' keyboard players. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 358.
  2. Harry Hawks, "Ossie Hibbert," Featured Artists, ReggaeRecord.com, July 11, 2012, https://www.reggaerecord.com/en/content/featured_artist.php?id=665.
  3. Hawks, "Ossie Hibbert." His friend Rodguel "Blackbeard" Sinclair also credited him with the keyboards on Dennis Brown's "No Man Is an Island" at Studio One. "Musician Ossie Hibbert Dies in NY."
  4. Hawks, "Ossie Hibbert." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 156.
  5. Hawks, "Ossie Hibbert."
  6. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 160, 163; Hawks, "Ossie Hibbert."
  7. Hawks, "Ossie Hibbert." "Musician Ossie Hibbert Dies in NY."
  8. Hawks, "Ossie Hibbert." Hawks gives "OK Fred" as reaching number 11 in Britain.
  9. "Musician Ossie Hibbert Dies in NY." Birth date from Hawks, "Ossie Hibbert."

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