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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Rod Taylor

Artist. Reggae, roots

Active
1975-present
Sunrise
March 2, 1957, Kingston, Jamaica
Also known as
Rocky T, Rodney Taylor

Rod Taylor was a sweet-voiced roots singer who, for the Rough Guide, typified the culturally conscious "youthman" singer of the late 1970s more than anyone. A Trenchtown school friend called him Rocky T because he was "tough like rockstone."

Taylor won an amateur contest at the Bohemia Club near Half Way Tree, where Ossie Hibbert heard him and brought him to Channel One. There, in 1975, with Sly and Robbie, he cut his first record, "Bad Man Comes and Goes," and Dillinger voiced a cut alongside him. Bunny Lee then recorded him on "Garden of Eden."

Earl Zero, who was also at the Bohemia Club that night, took him to Greenwich Farm and Bertram Brown's Freedom Sounds label. Backed by the Soul Syndicate, he cut "Ethiopian Kings" and "In the Right Way," two of his biggest hits, with dub sides mixed by King Tubby. Phillip Frazer's "Come Ethiopians" followed the formula of "Ethiopian Kings"; Taylor said he had sung that melody first. "Ethiopian Kings" played on the radio led Mikey Dread to record him, and their "His Imperial Majesty" (1978) was a big Jamaican hit, though the two disagreed over who wrote it.

In the same years he recorded for Prince Far I, Prince Hammer, who produced his first album, If Jah Should Come Now, and Don Mais's Roots Tradition label in Greenwich Farm. An album he made for Linval Thompson was never released; Taylor said the tape was lost. He moved to France in 1991 and has kept recording, including Shining Bright for Britain's Jah Warrior label, which the Rough Guide judged more consistent than any of his 1970s albums.

Last updated October 6, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 186.
  2. Angus Taylor, "Interview: Ten Big Tunes with Rod Taylor," United Reggae, July 22, 2012, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n1044/072212/interview-ten-big-tunes-with-rod-taylor.
  3. Taylor's account in Taylor, "Ten Big Tunes with Rod Taylor."
  4. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 186, 240; Taylor, "Ten Big Tunes with Rod Taylor."
  5. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 186; Taylor, "Ten Big Tunes with Rod Taylor."
  6. Taylor, "Ten Big Tunes with Rod Taylor." Taylor recalled that the record held the JBC and RJR charts for weeks and that Mikey Dread wrongly claimed to have written it. The Rough Guide names Taylor among the "hard roots singers" Mikey Dread produced in 1978 to 1981. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 238.
  7. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 187, 250, 454; Taylor, "Ten Big Tunes with Rod Taylor." Taylor said he put his own money into the title track and co-produced it with Prince Hammer.
  8. Taylor, "Ten Big Tunes with Rod Taylor."
  9. Taylor, "Ten Big Tunes with Rod Taylor." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 417.

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