The King Tubby Collection | Set #0103
Few names in music are as revolutionary as Osbourne Ruddock, AKA King Tubby. Born on the 28th of January 1941, Tubby had a natural gift for electronics, becoming well known as a radio repairman before his entry to the music buisness. Tubby briefly ran a pirate radio station untill his transmitter was taken down, moving on to establishing his own Tubby's Hometown Hi-Fi sound system and joining Duke Reid's legendary Treasure Isle studio as a disc cutter.
King Tubby's Hometown Hi-fi pictured at a dance in Kingston, taken by Ted Bafaloukos.
At the time, most Jamaican 45's featured a plain instrumental version of the main song on the flip side, which was called the "version". When Reid asked Tubby to produce versions of songs, he went beyond the custom of just muting the vocal track, reworking and emphasising the different instrument tracks through the settings on the mixer and early effects units, not following the engineers rulebook and faithfully reproducing the sounds of reality, instead conjuring up new and otherworldly sounds that have never been heard by a human ear before. This was coupled with bringing the vocal track in and out, itself heavily clad in reverberation and delay, which played back with high amplification was wowing the crowds at sound system events in downtown Kingston. It is still hotly disputed as to who the originator and inventor of dub is, but whoever was the first Tubby established the hallmarks of the genre, with his production work in the 1970s making him one of the best-known celebrities in Jamaica, garnering widespread interest from producers, engineers, and musicians across the world.
In 1971 Tubby decided to leave Duke Reid and set up shop on his own terms, building his small studio at 18 Dromilly Avenue. Tubby's place was too small for recording bands, the sole focus was making new records from pre-existing recordings, dub versions were no longer just a space filler, and Tubby was destined to make them the main attraction!
Tubby purchased a 4-track MCI mixer from Byron Lee's Dynamic Studio, which featured twelve input channels, each with a three-band EQ and one send. The mixer was the precursor to the MCI JH-400 and had been designed by MCI founder Jeep Harned. It was the first model to have a remote tape machine controller built in, which could be operated by the five buttons in the lower far right corner. A particular feature of the desk that has become almost legendary in its own right is the large red knob on the top right of the desk, which controls an Altec/Langevin style stepped Low-cut filter that has come to be known by many names including 'King Tubby Big Knob' and 'The Squawk Filter' which became a signature sound across Tubby's records.
King Tubby's MCI Console Pictured in 2010.
In 1973, King Tubby expanded the operation and built a vocal booth at his studio so that he could record vocal tracks onto the instrumental tapes brought to him by various producers. Thus began an era of close collaboration with the prolific Bunny 'Striker' Lee, Vivian Jackson, a.k.a. Yabby U, and the enigmatic Augustus Pablo, resulting in landmark albums like King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown, Prophecy of Dub and Dub From the Roots. The touchpaper had been lit and the Waterhouse-based studio became the center of this new musical revolution. A small suburban house, with the king at the controls, re-mixing tracks into sprawling, echo-laden soundscapes designed to take listeners into a new dimension. Punctuated by galloping high hats and the squawking of Tubby's signature filter, dub was alive and kicking. Ushering in an era of vocal cuts on side A and dub versions on B, like strawberries and cream, a winning formula that would endure until the late 90s.
Leroy “Fatman” Thompson at King Tubby’s Studio beside the MCI mixer, likely taken between 1985-89.
Not only did Tubby pioneer dub, inventing the concept of re-mixing as an art form which would lay the foundation for modern music from house to hip-hop to EDM, but he also was an apt businessman. Due to his celebrity, and his skills, mixes by Tubby were highly sought after. By the mid 70's he already had established several record labels, including the special 'King Tubby's The Dub Master' label dedicated to strictly dubplate! In the mid 80's seeing the shift in the industry toward digital dancehall, and the boom in record sales, Tubby decided to launch a series of record labels, Firehouse, Waterhouse, and Taurus to capitalise on this new market. Together these four labels make up our King Tubbys Collection, which celebrates the great man himself, Mr Osbourne Ruddock, The King at The Controls!
Waterhouse
Named after the Waterhouse neighbourhood of Kingston which was the epicentre of Tubby's empire and home to all of his studios, the Waterhouse label was distributed by Waterhouse focused on digital dancehall and was active from 1985 until the end of the 1980s, Tuff Gong had strong connections in the US and UK which allowed the records to reach a larger international audience.
Firehouse
Firehouse was one of King Tubby’s key ventures as he adapted to the emerging digital production landscape of the mid-1980s. It was distributed by Neville Lee's (brother of Byron) Reflecting the heated energy of Kingston’s urban streets and the intense atmosphere in the studio, the Firehouse label became synonymous with Tubby’s move into the dancehall era. With tracks like the hit single “Tempo” (famously produced for Anthony Red Rose), Firehouse displayed Tubby’s ability to blend traditional dub techniques with the fresh sounds of digital rhythm, in a time when sound systems ruled the streets and political tensions ran high.
"Some call it Waterhouse, Firehouse rock
Oh yeah, oh yeah
Some call it Firehouse, Waterhouse rock
Look at that, look at that"
Taurus
Taurus came later on, founded in 1987 again focusing on releasing digital dancehall productions which was the flavour of the 80's. The label was distributed by King Tubby's own 'King Tubbys' distribution company, in an effort to retain the distribution cut. With hits from the likes of Sugar Minott, Gregory Isaacs, and Junior Murvin, the label released over 150 singles in the period between its founding in 1987 and the year Tubby was senselessly murdered outside his Waterhouse-based studio, August the 7th 1991.
The Dub Master
The Dub Master served as a special label print that Tubby used for 45 RPM 10" Acetate dubplates featuring unreleased mixes and versions of tunes, wicked style yah! The sister label to his 'The Dub Inventor' which served the same purpose. 10" gives more space for the grooves, which in turn allows the record to have more lower frequencies, allowing the tune to drop much heavier than on a standard 7" single! Each of these disks is incredibly rare and sought after by collectors, though Acetate is designed as a master disk for reproduction and not for longevity, so the state of degradation of the records is likely poor.
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