Ska → Reggae (Kingston)

1932 · Kingston

Clement Seymour "Coxsone" Dodd was a Kingston sound-system operator turned record producer whose Studio One became the most important laboratory of Jamaican popular music.

1936 · Kingston

Lee "Scratch" Perry began as an assistant to Coxsone Dodd before becoming one of reggae's most inventive producers, working with his house band the Upsetters.

1941 · Kingston

Desmond Dekker was a Jamaican ska and rocksteady singer-songwriter whose recordings with backing group the Aces gave the music some of its earliest international hits.

1944 · Kingston

Jimmy Cliff was a Jamaican singer-songwriter who moved through ska, rocksteady, and reggae and became one of the genre's first global ambassadors.

1944 · Kingston

A founding member of the Wailers, Peter Tosh was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist whose militant lyrics gave the group much of its political edge.

1945 · Kingston

Born in Nine Mile and raised partly in the Trench Town district of Kingston, Bob Marley grew from a young ska singer into the most recognisable figure in reggae worldwide.

1947 · Kingston

Millie Small was a Jamaican singer best known for her 1964 recording of "My Boy Lollipop," a bluebeat-flavoured single that became one of the first ska records to reach a mass audience abroad.

1959 · London

Founded by Chris Blackwell in 1959 and relocated to Britain, Island Records was the British-Jamaican label that brought Jamaican music to the international rock market.

1963 · Kingston

Fronted by the gospel-fired voice of Frederick "Toots" Hibbert, the Maytals carried Jamaican music from ska through rocksteady into reggae.

1963 · Kingston

The Wailers came together in Kingston in the early 1960s around Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer, first recording vocal-harmony ska for Coxsone Dodd before reshaping themselves as a full reggae band.

1964-05 · Kingston

Formed in Kingston in May 1964, the Skatalites were the studio band whose tight horn arrangements and shuffling rhythm defined the golden age of ska.

1968 · London

Trojan Records was a British record label that became the principal channel for Jamaican ska, rocksteady, and reggae reaching the United Kingdom from the late 1960s.

1964 · London

Recorded by the teenage Millie Small and issued in the 1960s, "My Boy Lollipop" was a bluebeat reworking of an older rhythm-and-blues tune that became an unexpected international hit and one of the earliest Jamaican-derived records to chart widely in Britain and beyond.

1964 · Kingston

"Simmer Down," recorded by the young Wailers for Coxsone Dodd's Studio One in 1964, was the group's first major Jamaican hit, a ska number addressed to the restless youth of Kingston's tougher districts.

1968 · Kingston

Recorded by Desmond Dekker with backing group the Aces, "Israelites" is widely remembered as one of the earliest Jamaican records to break through with British and American audiences, carrying the island's rocksteady-into-reggae sound to a vast new public.

1969 · Kingston

Written and performed by Jimmy Cliff, "Many Rivers to Cross" is a gospel-soaked reggae ballad of endurance that became one of the genre's most enduring songs and was later widely covered.

1972 · Kingston

Directed by Perry Henzell and starring Jimmy Cliff, this 1972 Jamaican film told the story of a country singer drawn into Kingston's music industry and underworld.

1972-07 · Kingston

The 1972 soundtrack album collected reggae and rocksteady recordings by Jimmy Cliff and several other Kingston artists, becoming for many overseas listeners their first concentrated exposure to the music.

1973-04 · Kingston

Released in 1973, Catch a Fire was the Wailers' first album for Island Records and was conceived as a full international rock-album statement rather than a collection of singles.

1973-10 · Kingston

Burnin', the Wailers' second Island album of 1973, was the last to feature the original trio of Marley, Tosh, and Bunny Wailer together.

1964-05 · Kingston

In May 1964 a group of Kingston's finest session musicians coalesced into the Skatalites, giving ska its definitive instrumental band.

1970-12 · Kingston

By December 1970 the vocal trio of Marley, Tosh, and Bunny Wailer had reconstituted itself as the full band Bob Marley & The Wailers, with a rhythm section that would anchor their international albums.

1972 · Kingston

The 1972 release of Perry Henzell's The Harder They Come, with Jimmy Cliff in the lead, put Kingston's music and street life on cinema screens for the first time at scale.

1973-04 · London

The April 1973 release of Catch a Fire on Island Records marked the moment reggae was presented to the world as album-length art aimed at the international rock market.

1963 · Kingston

Coxsone Dodd's recording studio on Brentford Road in Kingston, the home of his Studio One operation, was the workshop where much of ska, rocksteady, and early reggae was first committed to tape.