Tom the Great Sebastian
Producer. Ska
- Active
- 1950-1960s
- Sunrise
- May 24, 1924
- Sunset
- 1966 or 1971 (suicide)
- Also known as
- Tom Wong, Thomas Wong, Tom the Great Sebastian sound system
Tom the Great Sebastian, the sound system of the Kingston soundman Thomas "Tom" Wong, was the most important sound in Kingston in the first half of the 1950s; most veterans agree it was the original big rig, with the most powerful amplifiers and the most speaker boxes.
Wong, the son of a Chinese-Jamaican father and an African-Jamaican mother, ran a hardware store downtown and began by playing music to draw customers; he named his sound after a Barnum circus act. By the account of the engineer Hedley Jones, Tom was the first customer for one of the amplified sets Jones began building in 1947, and the name "sound system" itself was Tom's. Its home was the corner of Luke Lane and Charles Street, and it played the big venues of Beat Street, among them Forresters' Hall, where Count Machuki got his professional break on the microphone in 1950. Machuki, the first star deejay, had started as a dancer at Tom's dances; Duke Vin was one of his selectors, and Count Suckle supplied him with American records. Tom never scratched the labels off his records, a sign, Bradley suggests, that competition had not yet turned cutthroat, and like Dodd and Reid after him he sponsored a radio show; his theme was Lynn Hope's "Blue Moon."
When Duke Reid and Coxsone Dodd took over Beat Street and the dances turned violent, Tom moved uptown to a residency at the Silver Slipper club at Cross Roads, leaving Machuki behind, and drew the biggest, most free-spending crowds of his career. He departed in 1966 or 1971; the cause was suicide.
Last updated October 15, 2026
Connections
- Duke Vin (employee)
- Count Machuki (deejay)
- Hedley Jones (collaborator)
- Count Suckle (worked with)
- Coxsone Dodd (rival)
- Duke Reid (rival)
Notes
- Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 9; Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 13, 351.
- Yasmine Peru, "Tom the Great Sebastian the Real OG," Jamaica Gleaner, June 19, 2022, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20220619/tom-great-sebastian-real-og. Augustyn describes him as a table-tennis player from Jones Town who built his sound from goods in his own hardware store. Heather Augustyn, "The Silver Slipper Club," SkaBook (blog), March 7, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/03/07/silver-slipper-club/.
- Augustyn, summarizing Jones: "his first customer for one of these new sound systems was Tom 'the Great Sebastian' Wong." In his own account, which Augustyn reprints, Jones writes that the dance halls "now featured what were commonly called 'sound systems' - a Tom Wong designation," and that the operators "depended on me to service" their equipment. Heather Augustyn, "Pioneer Hedley Jones," SkaBook (blog), December 19, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/12/19/pioneer-hedley-jones/.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 7; Machuki's account in Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 17.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 115, 293; David Katz, "RIP Count Suckle, London Soundsystem Pioneer," Red Bull Music Academy Daily, May 29, 2014, https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2014/05/count-suckle-rip.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 17; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 18; the soundman Metro's account in Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 28. Prince Buster told Augustyn that because Tom left the labels on, he could read them at Tom's dances and pass the artists' names to Dodd. Heather Augustyn, "Prince Buster Interview," SkaBook (blog), December 18, 2015, https://skabook.com/2015/12/18/prince-buster-interview/.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 35, 36, 293; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 14.
- Peru, "Tom the Great Sebastian the Real OG." The Gleaner notes that sources give the year as 1966 or 1971.
