Prince Buster

Producer and singer/songwriter Prince Buster is credited with both inventing ska and popularizing its slower and rougher stylistic successor, rocksteady. Born in Kingston in 1938, Cecil Bustamente Campbell began performing at the Glass Bucket Club while still in school. After working on Coxsone Dodd’s sound system, he launched his own: Voice of the People. In 1961, during his first production sessions, Buster revolutionized Jamaican music by directing guitarist Jah Jerry to emphasize upbeats, thereby creating the kinetic ska rhythm heard on Buster’s debut single, “Little Honey,” and hits like The Folkes Brothers’ “Oh Carolina.” He went on to release some 600 tracks during the decade. Beginning in 1966, his rocksteady tracks “Hard Man Fe Dead,” “Rude Rude Rudie (Don’t Throw Stones),” and “Judge Dread” provided the soundtrack to Jamaica’s rude-boy subculture, while ska hits like “Madness,” “One Step Beyond,” and “Al Capone” would later inspire England’s two-tone ska revival in the late ’70s. Having converted to Islam at the encouragement of Muhammed Ali, however, Buster found himself excluded from Jamaica’s emerging Rastafari-inspired roots-rock milieu. He quit music in 1973, emerging only intermittently prior to his death in 2016.