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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The Roots Radics

Band. Dancehall, reggae, dub

Active
1978-2010s
Also known as
Roots Radics, Radics, Roots Radics Band

The Roots Radics were the session band of the early dancehall years. By the end of the 1970s they had superseded the Revolutionaries, and they were to the first half of the 1980s what the Revolutionaries had been to the half-decade before.

The band was built around Errol "Flabba" Holt on bass, Lincoln "Style" Scott on drums and Eric "Bingy Bunny" Lamont on rhythm guitar. Noel "Sowell" Bailey, Dwight Pinkney and Roy Hamilton played lead guitar at different times, Eric "Fish" Clarke and Carlton "Santa" Davis drums, and Wycliffe "Steely" Johnson keyboards. All had been working in Kingston studios before they came together as the Radics in 1978, and Flabba and Bingy Bunny had played together in the Morwells since 1974. In Flabba Holt's telling, the two formed the band after Blacka Wellington left the Morwells to go abroad; they played first as Roots Rock, took the name Radics from their friend Leggo Beast, and cut David Isaacs's "Just Like a Sea" at their first session. What they changed was the beat: slower, sparer and more syncopated, almost metronomic, and at times more threatening than what had gone before. Bradley hears in their jam "Jumping Master" "roots reggae on nodding terms with the digital age." Flabba said that he was told early on to play like Leroy Sibbles, Robbie Shakespeare, or James Jamerson, but "mi always waan sound like me."

Even before they had the name, the same players were cutting tough new versions of old Studio One riddims for Don Mais's Roots Tradition label, among them Slim Smith's "Never Let Go," behind Phillip Frazer, Little John, Ranking Toyan and Peter Ranking and General Lucky. Most listeners first heard them on Barrington Levy's debut album for Henry "Junjo" Lawes, made at Channel One in 1979, and the pairing of Levy's voice with their raw riddims became the template for dancehall singing. Lawes used them for the run of Volcano hits that followed, including Eek-A-Mouse's "Wa Do Dem," Michigan and Smiley's "Diseases" (a Radics update of Alton Ellis's "Mad Mad"), Barry Brown's "Give Israel Another Try," Michael Prophet's "Gunman," Johnny Osbourne's "Fally Lover" and John Holt's "Police in Helicopter," with Scientist at the desk, whose sparse mixing suited their slower riddims. Flabba remembered Lawes arriving at Channel One with some thirty singers and recording "and tomorrow again," and said that Steely Johnson got his start with the band on a Levy session, sitting in when the established keyboard player refused to share it. They also recorded heavily for Linval Thompson. Jah Thomas's Midnight Rock productions were built on their riddims as well. As the resident band at Channel One they played on the Hoo Kims' productions, and they backed everything Mikey Dread and Sugar Minott released in Jamaica in those years.

They made three albums with Gregory Isaacs for his African Museum label, Lonely Lover, More Gregory and Night Nurse, and toured with him; Flabba recalled their London shows of 1981. Their unhurried riddims for Bunny Wailer's Cool Runnings and the Rock and Groove album helped turn the music from militancy toward the dancehall, and King Tubby mixed their tracks for Jah Screw's Dangerous Dub in 1981.

Bingy Bunny departed in 1993, Steely Johnson in 2009 and Sowell Bailey in 2014. In October 2014 Style Scott, who had founded Dub Syndicate with the British producer Adrian Sherwood in 1982, had his life taken at his home in Williamsfield, Manchester; he was fifty-eight.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 480; Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 247.
  2. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 249, 205. The Rough Guide spells the lead guitarist "Dwight Pickney" and gives Scott's name as Lincoln Valentine Scott; Bradley says the band "pulled together players from the Morwells and the Revolutionaries." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 480.
  3. Angus Taylor, "Interview: Flabba Holt in Kingston (Part 2)," United Reggae, December 22, 2015, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n2023/122215/interview-flabba-holt-in-kingston-part-2. Holt adds that Gregory Isaacs had suggested "Roots Rock" and that the first album they played was Edi Fitzroy's, cut at Channel One in one day.
  4. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 480; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 249.
  5. "Flabba Holt: 'Ace of Bass,'" Jamaica Observer, February 4, 2023, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2023/02/04/flabba-holt-ace-of-bass.
  6. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 249-50; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 494. The Rough Guide says Mais used either the Soul Syndicate or "the proto-Roots Radics," and it also hears "an early incarnation of the Roots Radics" on Prince Far I's Cry Tuff label. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 191, 250.
  7. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 251, 266. The album is Bounty Hunter.
  8. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 240, 266-68.
  9. Taylor, "Flabba Holt in Kingston (Part 2)." Holt names the keyboard player as Winston Wright and the tune as Levy's "Prison Oval Rock."
  10. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 242.
  11. Katz, who also names Errol "Tarzan" Nelson on keyboards and Santa Davis on drums among the players used before Scott joined and "the Radics line-up solidified." David Katz, "RIP Style Scott, Roots Radics Drummer," Red Bull Music Academy Daily, October 14, 2014, https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2014/10/style-scott-rip. Katz dates their run of "countless hits" to 1979-85. David Katz, "Style Scott Obituary," Guardian, October 30, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/30/style-scott.
  12. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 249, 253; Taylor, "Flabba Holt in Kingston (Part 2)."
  13. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 243, 253; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 491. The Rough Guide credits the album to Jah Screw.
  14. Angus Taylor, "Interview: Flabba Holt in Kingston (Part 1)," United Reggae, December 19, 2015, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n2022/121915/interview-flabba-holt-in-kingston-part-1.
  15. "Influential Reggae Drummer Found Dead in Manchester Home," Jamaica Observer, October 11, 2014, https://jamaicaobserver.com/2014/10/11/influential-reggae-drummer-found-dead-in-manchester-home. The date, October 9, and Dub Syndicate's founding are from "RIP: Drummer Style Scott Murdered," Reggaeville, accessed October 7, 2026, https://reggaeville.com/artist-details/dub-syndicate/news/view/rip-drummer-style-scott-murdered.

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