Although, like all musicians working in the reggae idiom, I had known for a long time who Clement (Coxsone) Dodd was, I had never met him. During the years I worked in Kingston, Jamaica as a session guitarist, from 1980-1985, I had certainly heard about him. Lloyd Parks, the great bassist and bandleader of We The People, had made his first record for Coxsone at a young age as part of the vocal duo The Termites. Lloyd, I think, was somewhat embarrassed by the group’s name, and the title of their biggest hit, “Have Mercy Mr. Percy.” But he did have a copy of the Studio One “Presenting The Termites” album in a rack high up on his record shop wall, safely out of reach of anyone who might want to buy it.
Lloyd is not a verbose man, but when I pressed him about the album, he said, “Coxsone never want to pay. ‘Five pound a tune, that’s all me pay,’ him seh all de while. Me proud fe start deh still. Nuff artists come outa Coxsone stables.” He never would play the album for me, despite my pleading, and I never got around to buying it before I left Jamaica.
My friend Bernard Collins of the Abyssinians had taken me by 13 Brentford Road (just renamed Studio One Boulevard), where the studio was located, since it was near his home in Trench Town, but we never went inside. And none of the musicians I knew that did sessions ever worked there. When I inquired, I heard the same thing. “Coxsone only pay thirty dollars a tune. Me nah work for dem money deh. Him have him own musicians.” Many of us were not above playing for less than the forty or fifty dollars Jamaican per song that was the de facto recording scale at the time, but still no one ever admitted going there recently, although some had worked for him at the beginning of their careers.
As I got deeper into the scene, I realized just how much of reggae is built from the Studio One catalogue. For a typical American reggae fan like me, whose first exposure to the music was through the movie soundtrack to “The Harder They Come” (which contains no Studio One tunes) and believed that the reggae albums released on Island and Virgin in the seventies were the peak of the genre, this was a revelation.
Over and over, at sessions and rehearsals, the other musicians would jump on a tune and play it instantly, before I could even catch my breath. I’d say, “But you know it already,” and they would look at me pityingly and say, “But Andy, a Studio One riddim dat. Oonu fe know dem ting deh if yu a deal wid reggae.” But how to learn them? The records were easily available, but I was living a bare-bones existence at that time and did not have a turntable. Nor did my funds allow for many mix tape purchases.
Soon I realized that the oldies shows on Jamaican radio were veritable gold mines of Studio One tunes, although they never announced who any of the artists were. Every night that I wasn’t recording or rehearsing, I would sit on my mattress and play my electric guitar, unplugged, along with the radio, trying my best to copy the tone, timing, and feel of the guitar parts exactly. When I realized that the bass lines were actually the defining element of the songs, I learned them too.
After I had played Skateland, (a roller rink in Half-Way Tree that also served as a concert hall and dance venue) with We The People a few times, I finally got up the nerve to attend the sound system dances held there. Living in Kingston, one could hear the sound systems in the distance almost every night. But once I went to a roots dance myself and saw how the selector and DJs interacted with the dancers, I began to hear the true power of Studio One. Every Coxsone tune generated excitement no matter whether they were dropped early or late in the evening, years after they had been originally released.
So I knew Coxsone’s music long before I met him. But that did not happen until I joined Winston Grennan’s band in New York shortly after I moved there in 1986. Winston had played drums on many of the Studio One classics, and felt that Coxsone owed him a favor (if not also some money). So he approached Coxsone about recording the band. Coxsone agreed, and so it was that I went to Coxsone’s Music City, 3135 Fulton Street in Brooklyn, for the first time, along with the rest of the Ska-Rocks Band.
Music City at first glance looked like just about every other Jamaican record shop I had ever been in. Glass topped counters with CDs and reggae paraphenalia inside, records mounted in wire racks on fiberboard, and stacks of 45s behind the counter near the cash register. Two things were different about it.
The first was the fact that at this point in history the corner of Fulton and Norwood was one of the worst crack dealing centers in the city, and the street scene was absolutely intense, even for Brooklyn. The second was the gray-haired, stately Jamaican gentleman wearing a cricket cap behind the counter. He regarded me gravely with large, deep eyes, evaluating.
Winston introduced us. “Andy, this is Coxsone. Coxsone, Andy. Andy plays guitar in my band.” I extended my hand. Roots Jamaicans do not readily shake hands, so this was a test on my part to see how used to non-Jamaicans Coxsone was. As I expected, he was not at all uncomfortable and met my grasp.
“Pleased to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“The pleasure is mine.”
“Are we cool parked out front?”
“Yes, mon. Those people don’t allow anything to interfere with dem business. It’s daytime, you’re fine for now.”
During the session that followed, Coxsone said little, either about the performances or the recording. This did not surprise me since it was Winston’s project. He did mention liking one song that had a boogie-type bass line. At the end of the session he asked for my number. Being new in the city, I was of course pleased, but didn’t expect anything to come of it.
Several days later he called. “Can you come out to do a session for me?” Of course I could. After we agreed on a price, the engineer fired up the twenty-four track tape recorder, I tuned up, and plugged in.
I must take time out to describe the studio itself, which was a source of never-ending visual fascination. It consisted of a small control room, and beyond it a larger recording room, both connected to the front of the shop by a tiny passageway. When I first started working there, there was an actual door separating the control room from the recording room, as is standard practice. After a few years, the door was taken out, which meant that studio chatter in the control room could leak onto the recording. This happened more than once, but never seemed to bother Coxsone much. The door was supposed to be replaced, but no one ever got around to it.
This passageway, like the rest of the studio, was made even smaller by the tape boxes, keyboards, electronic equipment in various stages of repair, boxes of albums and 45s, and whatever treasures Coxsone had recently acquired at auction, waiting to be shipped to Jamaica to be sold. Coxsone loved auctions, and often spent Sundays attending them. I could usually tell if he’d scored something of interest, as it would appear at the front of the shop, waiting to be packed and shipped to Jamaica.
Over the years I worked for him, the piles of junk grew higher and higher as more and more work was done in the control room. If he had recently been to an auction, there would hardly be enough room to get into the studio and set up the amp and mic. Coxsone always insisted on miking the amp with an old Neumann (which he used on everything). He was open to different mic techniques, many of which I would try depending on the patience of whoever was engineering, but he disliked the sound of the guitar going direct. He also insisted on putting guitar on nearly every track he recorded. (Bless him!) Without it, he said, a tune sounded like a demo and not a finished record.