Dennis Bovell presents History of King Tubby

A Brief History of King Tubby with Dennis Bovell

The first dub singles appeared in 1971, but the man generally credited with "inventing" the genre is Osbourne Ruddock, better known as King Tubby. King Tubby raised an entire generation of recording engineers, who went on to become innovators of Jamaican music, such as Prince Jammy (Lloyd James), who concocted the all-digital reggae Under Me Sleng Teng (1985), credited with inventing "ragga" (a fusion of reggae, rap and electronic dance music), and Scientist (Overton Brown).

Dennis Bovell known as the inventor of the term 'Lovers Rock' knocked out some of the ’80s finest dub, disco and post-punk gems – both as a solo artist and as a producer for I Roy, Steel Pulse, The Slits and many more. While Bovell is a talented musician it’s his material as a producer and engineer that deserves the most props. After cutting dub albums as Blackbeard, 4th Street Orchestra and under his own name, and famously helping provide musical accompaniment to the dub poetry of London-via-Jamaica wordsmith Linton Kwesi Johnson, he became an in-demand producer. Bovell’s Barbados roots and British upbringing gave him a unique perspective and different influences that peppered his sound. There’s a distinct heaviness to his music — the bass a rib-cage rattling undertow, the drums a polyrhythmic shuffle — that he cultivated as a DJ. His tunes had to measure up to the best in the business, but often ended up outweighing them.