Roots Reggae Producers

producers:
the producer in jamaica is at least as much the artist as the singer or instrumentalist. most of the artists in the seventies worked with all the top kingston producers in the course of their careers, and the producers made the styles. by the time you get to the heyday of dub, the producer/re-mixer is explicitly the artist.

Clement Dodd (Coxsone)

Certainly one the dominant figures in Jamaican and hence world music, Coxsone was running a sound to rival Reid's at the outset of the ska era. He recorded the Skatalites, Delroy Wilson, the Wailers, Stranger Cole and Ken Boothe etc etc at the legendary Studio One, wheere he also mentored the young Lee Perry. In the rock steady era: Jackie Mittoo, Gaylads, Marcia Griffiths, Dawn Penn, the Heptones, etc. Studio One was the driving force in early roots: their lineup was ridicuolously great in the early seventies: classic Burning Spear, Alton Ellis, John Holt, Wailing Souls, Ernest Ranglin etc. (Many of these records were produced for Dodd by Joe Gibbs.) Many of these were later recycled in dub, though other people made better dub albums than Coxsone, I think. As I understand it, Dodd ended up moving to NYC and running a record store.

Winston Holness (Niney the Observer)
Early on, Niney worked with Perry. His productions are similar to Perry's, though maybe not as wild, but he also has a style and genius all his own. "Blood and Fire," voiced by Niney himself, was a sign of the apocalypse. He produced a slew of artists and a number of classic cuts by such as Junior Byles, Michael Rose/Black Uhuru (the classic "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"), and of course Dennis Brown and Gregory Isaacs.
This is a very strong, brief representation of his work:

King Tubby
The man who invented dub, or at least made it popular, Tubby was a re-mix engineer to whom most of the great Kingston producers took their sides. He'd mix out the vocals and screw with the instrumentals (often on his own hiome-made equipment) and the result would be issued on the B side of the single. He ran one the top sound systems in early seventies, and the pioneering dj U-Roy toasted over Tubby's dub plates on that system. Eventually he turned to independent production. If his dub sounds fairly simple, and is dull in large doses, that's because he fundamentally wanted a simple approach, and because we hear the stuff through the lens of much more activist dubbers (including Tubby's protege Scientist), while at this point digital technology allows a degree of freedom in re-making tracks that of course Tubby could not have conceived in 1972. cannabis dub

Bunny Lee
An innovator by necessity, Lee couldn't afford studio time, and so kept recycling rock steady rhythm tracks. This turned into a fundamental reggae style, but also pushed ahead the cut-and-paste production that is now key to hip hop and other forms. Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare did their early work with Lee's session band, the Aggrovators. Lee is famous for the "flying cymbal" sound, which is not one of my favorites. But he made a wide variety of moves.
The album below is a good representation of his best period: the lovely soul singer Cornell Campbell, with dubs by Tubby:

lee "scratch" perry

An artist himself from the rock steady era onward, Perry is the best-known producer in Jamaican history. Considering how central the work is, the man himself is a freak: he said that he recorded four tracks, while the other 12 came from outer space. He asserted that he was himself an alien, and when he got tired of the legendary Black Ark studio he just burned it down. He produced the early roots recordings of Marley and the Wailers, and then made amazing records with everyone, including Max Romeo, the Congos, Junior Murvin, etc etc. There is always an unexpected twist or bizarre underlying soundscape in his records.
Almost any starting point with Scratch is arbitrary: there is so much amazing material on disk. "Arkology" is excellent, though.

Duke Reid
By the mid and late fifties, Reid's was a, or perhaps the, dominant sound system in Jamaica. Reid was a famously hard man: toting a gun and providing his own security. It was certainly a natural step from sound system dude to producer: for one thing you could play and promote your own records/artists over your sound. He ended up as one of the great producers in ska and rock steady, many on his "Treasure Isle" and "Trojan" labels.He recorded the Skatalites (as did his great rival Coxsone), and such rock steady greats as the Melodians and the Paragons. Many of the great rhythms were recycled as cuts and dj tracks throughout the roots era.

Adrian Sherwood
Scary-good beat producer, white, from the UK. Sherwood has produced all sorts of music, but is at his best with reggae and dub: check, for example, the Dub Syndicate albums: so solid, scary, and spooky that you forget that they're melodic. To see the full range of Sherwood: Gary Clail, Keith Leblanc, African Head Charge.

links:
reggae reviews.com