DownBeat The Ruler

Clement Seymour Dodd was born in 1932 in Kingston Jamaica. His parents were upwardly mobile. His father Benjamin worked as building contractor who had helped to build the Carib Theater, while his mother Doris Darlington owned a liquor store and ice cream parlor at Beeston Street and Love Lane. Dodd grew up with his mother who was to have a lasting influence on him. From her he learned the self-reliance that was to become the hallmark of his career
In the early fifties Clement Dodd went to the United States as a migrant worker. Then in his early twenties Dodd had already been bitten by the music bug and was a staunch fan of American artists. He was listening to radio shows from stations like WLAC in Nashville, Tennessee, and also to the Armed Forces Radio., WLAC provided a groundbreaking format that exposed the emergent black music to wide audience of white teenagers and boasted a 50,000 watt signal that flooded 28 states with hot R&B. And it reached as far as Clement Dodd in Jamaica as well
One of the interesting facts from this period was that Dodd’s mother was actually the first selector for his set while he was in the US making her Jamaica’s first female dj. From these humble roots the popularity of his sound grew. His acumen at picking danceable material that became popular with Jamaicans was legendary. Legendary enough for him to run up to six different sets at venues throughout Kingston. On Friday nights you could hear the sound blasting from venues like Bar-B-Que, Forrester’s Hall, King’s Lawn, Liberty Hall and the legendary Success Club that was located on the apply named Wildman Street. Dodd’s chief competitors were the sounds of Arthur “Duke” Reid, Prince Buster and King Edwards. In these days fans weren’t just fans, and it never was Duke this week and Coxsone next week. Fans were for life, and in downtown Kingston dancehalls the competition was rough.
In the early days Coxsone would press up around two hundred trial copies, primarily reserved for sound system use. He might press an additional two hundred which he would hold aside for sale after the song had lost its popularity in the dancehalls. A strong seller would sell around six hundred copies.
As Dodd recording grew in popularity he started to accelerate his recording sessions, but after one of his booked sessions at Federal was cancelled in favor of Byron Lee, who had built a career on covering Dodd and other producer’s material, he had had enough. Buying the dormant nightclub The End in 1962 Coxsone started recording in earnest. It was here that he used the cream of Jamaican musicians, The Skatalites, and began his legendary search for talent. In the early years he and other producers had used similar artists with varying success but Dodd had already realized that by developing his own unique set of musicians and singers he could maintain his position. Besides the Skatalites he discovered both The Wailers, and Delroy Wilson. Other big names included Jackie Mittoo, The Maytals, Jackie Opel, and The Gaylads. Even most of the Yap brother’s hits with the Skatalites were recorded at Studio One. With the breakup of the Skatalites Dodd formed the Soul Brothers as his new house band and whose Free Soul formed the basis of UK singer Lily Allen’s hit Smile.
By the time of Jamaica’s independence on August 6th, 1962 Clement Dodd has spent over a decade playing and recording music. When he was denied recording time he built his own studio. When his records were mastered with a used needle he started mastering on his own using Federal Records original engineer when he was denied time to press records he started his own manufacturing plant. He had his own stable of singers and musicians. He was a Blackman in an industry where few blacks had truly prospered.
Clement Dodd started to record in earnest. With his bands like the Soul Vendors, the Sound Dimension, the Soul Defenders and others he created much of Jamaica’s greatest music. The artists he recorded like Burning Spear, Johnny Osbourne, Horace Andy, John Holt, the Wailing Souls and Ken Boothe created songs that in many cases they never bettered. His rhythms, like Real Rock, Never Let Go, Full Up, and the Answer have been remade in Reggae countless times.One website credits the rhythm for Real Rock with over 268 versions.
It seems that Studio One is a part of everything that happens. Its legacy enhanced by the passage of time. Clement Seymour Dodd had a vision. By dreaming, believing and then creating he built Studio One into the bedrock of Jamaican music. Who would have ever heard of Reggae, a music created on a tiny island in the West Indies, if Clement Dodd hadn’t had a vision that he would go on to achieve