King Tubby

King Tubby -- born Osbourne Ruddock (1941) -- is considered to be the founding father of dub music. As a talented radio repairman, it was not long before he began designing and experimenting with sound amplifiers. Although he began his career by repairing faulty equipment for sound systems, he eventually started his own system called Tubby's Hometown Hi-Fi. The sound system quickly became a crowd favorite due to high quality sound, and novel reverb and echo effects designed by Tubby himself.

At the time, he was also working as disc-cutter for Duke Reid, where he began making experimental versions of popular rocksteady songs. Since Tubby was working with the master recording tapes, he was able to cut out the vocal tracks, fading them in and out at various times. He would often reduce the mix down to only the bass, while dropping other instruments in or out. All these methods essentially added up to the birth of dub music. Sound system DJs would use the spaces between vocals to talk, or "toast", over the mixes, giving rise to a popular styling still used by dance and hip-hop DJs to this day.



"He would curl, swirl, whirl, twirl, explode, corrode, erode, ignite, excite - upset and agrovate - slipping vibrant echo to shatter the instruments, and jamming reverberation to re-duplicate the melodies."

-- Snoopy, Story Of Dub, Black Echoes, 16th July 1977

By the early 1970's, Tubby began engineering and remixing songs with Jamaica's top producers such as Lee Perry, Bunny Lee, Augustus Pablo and Vivian Jackson, featuring artists such as Johnny Clarke, Horace Andy, Big Joe, Jah Stitch and many others. Tubby eventually reached celebrity status, whereby artists from the world over would seek his production skills. Sadly, a year after opening his own studio, Tubby was shot and killed outside his home in 1988.

King Tubby's discography is extensive, and can be found here at the Roots Archive.