Jackie Mittoo

Jackie was born March 3rd 1948 in Brown's Town, in the Parish of St. Ann, Jamaica and died December 16th 1990 at Wellesley Hospital, Toronto, Canada. He first began playing professionally at the age of thirteen with various bands such as The Rivals and The Sheiks and it was around this time that he started hanging out at Federal Studios and playing with the cream of Jamaican's musicians who from June, 1964 would become known as the Skatalites. In 1959 Clement "Coxsone" Dodd was recording artist at Federal Studios when he came into contact with Jackie Mittoo. Dodd was so impressed that he asked Jackie to run the sessions at his new Jamaica Recording Studio at 13 Brentford Road in Kingston when it opened in 1963. Mittoo and Dodd recorded thousands of tunes throughout the Sixties. When The Skatalites split Dodd formed a new studio band The Soul Brothers under Roland Alphonso's direction, Alphonso was responsible for the horn arrangements whilst Jackie wrote the music. Jackie went on to lead the session musicians changing their name to The Soul Vendors and later to Sound Dimension. Jackie wasn't just the leader he was a creator as well, giving the bass player his lines, writing the chords for the guitarist, playing keyboards himself as well as arranging the recordings. The artists recorded during this period included Ken Boothe, Bob Andy, Alton Ellis, The Wailers, The Heptones, Marcia Griffiths, John Holt, Slim Smith, Delroy Wilson and many, many others as well as recording superb instrumental music. This body of music is not only the foundation of reggae, constantly being covered and versioned, but an incredible artistic and creative achievement in it's own right. Mittoo died of cancer on December 16, 1990, aged 42. Clement "Coxsone" Dodd remembered: "He was an ambassador of our music worldwide... there can be no doubt [...]"