Contents - Beth Lesser

It was mostly introduction with the instrumental [following] – like [for] Baba
Brooks, Skatalites and those instrumental groups. King Stitt did come and do
a few tunes for [producer] Clancy Eccles – ‘Fire Corner’, ‘Vigerton Two’, ‘I’m
the Ugly One’ – that was before U Roy. They were hit songs.”
But, more commonly, in the ska days, the idea of a deejay making a full
record seemed absurd to most people. According to Dennis Alcapone, “The
bigger heads were not used to us making records, so when I did a record, they
would laugh and say, ‘But Dennis, you don’t sing, a talk you talk. How you
mek record?” *
Many people consider the first toaster to really ‘deejay’ on a sound to have
been Count Machuki. Count Matchuki, like many other reggae legends,
started his public life as a dancer but, by 1950, he was working as a selector for
Tom the Great Sebastian and later moved on to work with Clement Dodd’s
Downbeat sound.
“He had that little flavour in him, and he brought it on with a lot of style,”
explains Clive Chin who used to see Machuki in the dance. In those early
days, Machuki was officially employed as a selector. “Selectors, at the time, all
they could know to do was pick up the record, put it on, pick it up, put it on,
and they had nothing in between because, you must remember, it was just one
turn table they using at the time. So, they had that break. And in that break
now, Machuki would do his toasting. He brought in that whole style of saying
something before he put the needle onto the vinyl. He was the first- before
Lord Comic, King Stitt.”
Legendary toaster U Roy used to listen to Count Machuki. “I used to love
to hear that man talk because when him talk it’s like you wan’ hear him say
something again. So, I always try to be in time, the way he was in time with
the rhythm. Cause there’s a little art to it. You have to listen and be in time
with the rhythm. Them things me learn from dem man there.”
Machuki, though, had a secret source of inspiration. Producer Clive Chin
remembers him carrying around a particular book. “There was one he said he
bought out of Beverly’s [record shop] back in the ‘60s. The book was called
Jives and it had sort of slangs, slurs in it and he was reading it, looking it over,
and he found that it would be something that he could explore and study, so
he took that book and it helped him.” **
Yet, even with so many deejays performing regularly in the dance, Jamaicans
didn’t take deejays very seriously as artists. “People didn’t really recognize
the deejay stuff until U Roy took over,” explained Dennis Alcapone to
writer Carl Gayle. “King Stitt did a good thing with things like [hit 45] Fire
Corner, but it didn’t really get off until U Roy came along. I came on the scene
* Jamaican Sunday Gleaner July five,1998, Dennis Alcapone, Godfather of reggae
** Clive can’t recall the exact name of the book Machuki was reading at the time. One possibility
would be The Jives of Dr. Hepcat, written by Austin disc-jockey, Albert Lavada Durst (Dr. Hepcat),
1953. Dr Hepcat worked in Austin, Texas on KVET
14 | RUB A DUB STYLE – The Roots of Modern Dancehall