KING TUBBY (born Osbourne Ruddock, 28 January 1941–6 February 1989), Jamaican sound engineer, musician, and record producer who greatly influenced the development of dub music and is often cited as the inventor of the remix in danceand electronic-music production.
Tubby came of age in Kingston’s vibrant music scene of the 1950s. Owing to his skill as a tinkerer and radio repairman he would often work with local “sound systems”—groups of DJs, sound engineers, and MCs with their own jury-rigged audio equipment who would compete with one another to throw the largest and loudest parties—and soon gained a reputation for the high quality of his sound. Eventually Tubby started his own sound system, Tubby’s Hometown Hi-Fi, which became one of Kingston’s most in-demand acts.
In the late 1960s King Tubby—the nickname stemmed from his mother’s admiration of Liberian president William Tubman—opened his own production facility, aptly named King Tubby’s Studio, in the heart of Kingston, where he pushed the boundaries of music production and engineering using a mixing console, tape machines, and myriad studio effects. Tubby pioneered techniques such as remixing, reverb, echo, and phasing, which would become hallmarks of the dub sound. Indeed, his sonic experiments—isolating the rhythm and bass of existing songs and vastly magnifying them, pulling and twisting melodies into entirely new shapes— would prove so influential that soon the machinations of inspired studio engineers would often outstrip in importance the source composition. Under Tubby’s tutelage dub soon established itself as more than a tributary of reggae, becoming a musical genre in its own right.
The influence of Tubby’s innovations spread like wildfire across the global music landscape. In the United Kingdom dub found a receptive audience among post-punk musicians who embraced its experimental ethos, and in the United States dub’s influence permeated the burgeoning hip-hop scene, where producers sampled Tubby’s bassheavy grooves to create innovative beats and soundscapes. Dub’s emphasis on the artistry of the studio has had a massive influence on genres such as electronic dance music (EDM), jungle, grime, ambient, and dubstep.
Tubby’s willingness to work with a diverse range of artists reflected his adventurous musical spirit; the list of his collaborators reads like a who’s who of the golden era of reggae: Augustus Pablo, The Aggrovators, Yabby You, Scientist, U-Roy, to name just a select few. His reputation has only grown since his untimely death in 1989, and in Jamaica Tubby is revered as a national icon, a visionary whose contributions to music transcended borders and boundaries. King Tubby’s Studio remains hallowed ground for musicians and music lovers alike, a pilgrimage site where the echoes of his genius still linger.
Standout tracks: in “A Ruffer Dub” Tubby creates a psychedelic sonic whirlwind of echo and filter; Johnny Clarke’s vocals blend seamlessly with the woozy effects, while Tubby manipulates a single guitar riff and snare crack to build a complex auditory landscape. In “King Tubby’s Skank” Tubby layers U-Roy’s dynamic ad-libs throughout against a backdrop of relentless bass in a manner that anticipates hip-hop stylings. Other tracks of note: Lloyd & Kerry, “Tubbys in Full Swing” (1972); Augustus Pablo, “King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown” (1975); Mickey Dread & the Instigators, “Robbers Roost” (1978); King Tubby, “‘Cus Cus Dubwise’ aka ‘Dread Dub,’” (1981); King Tubby, “The Roots of Dub” (1975).