King Stitt

Coxsone's Downbeat

Winston Sparkes was born in Kingston in 1940. He got the name Stitt as a boy because of a stutter. From 1956 he worked on Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's Sir Coxsone's Downbeat sound system, where Count Machuki, generally named as Jamaica's first deejay, noticed his dancing and let him try the microphone. Stitt called himself "The Ugly One," after the Lee Van Cleef character in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and turned his facial disfigurement into part of his act. By 1963 he was billed as king of the deejays.

Clancy Eccles and the first deejay records

Sound-system deejays of the ska era worked live and were rarely recorded. In 1969 producer Clancy Eccles cut Stitt over his Dynamites studio band for the Clandisc label. "Fire Corner," "Lee Van Cleef," "Herbsman Shuffle," "King of Kings" and "Vigorton 2" are among the earliest reggae records built around a deejay rather than a singer, released shortly before U-Roy's run of hits for Duke Reid.

Later years

Coxsone's sound system wound down around 1968, and Stitt worked as a mason before returning to Studio One as an assistant to Dodd. He appeared at revival shows, including the 2002 Legends of Ska concerts in Toronto, and recorded into 2011, including work with Bruno Blum. He died at his Kingston home on 31 January 2012.

From Downbeat to the Bronx

The deejay tradition Stitt carried from Machuki passed to U-Roy, who ran Coxsone's second set while Stitt ran the first, and then to a wave of 1970s toasters. That Kingston practice of a man on the microphone talking over records played on a large sound system is the background DJ Kool Herc, born in Kingston, brought to the Bronx in the early 1970s.