Jackie Mittoo

Jamaican-Canadian keyboardist and songwriter, born March 3rd 1948 in Brown's Town, in the Parish of St. Ann, Jamaica and died of cancer at age 42 on December 16th 1990 at Wellesley Hospital, Toronto, Canada. He first began playing professionally at the age of thirteen with various bands such as The Rivals and The Sheiks and it was around this time that he started hanging out at Federal Studios and playing with the cream of Jamaican's musicians who from June, 1964 would become known as the Skatalites. In 1959, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd was recording artists at Federal Studios when he came into contact with Jackie Mittoo. Dodd was so impressed that he asked Jackie to run the sessions at his new Jamaica Recording Studio at 13 Brentford Road in Kingston when it opened in 1963. Mittoo and Dodd recorded thousands of tunes throughout the Sixties. When The Skatalites split Dodd formed a new studio band The Soul Brothers under Roland Alphonso's direction, Alphonso was responsible for the horn arrangements whilst Jackie wrote the music. Jackie went on to lead the session musicians changing their name to Soul Vendors and later to Sound Dimension. Jackie wasn't just the leader he was a creator as well, giving the bass player his lines, writing the chords for the guitarist, playing keyboards himself as well as arranging the recordings. The artists recorded during this period included Ken Boothe, Bob Andy, Alton Ellis, The Wailers, The Heptones, Marcia Griffiths, John Holt, Slim Smith, Delroy Wilson and many others, along with instrumental music.