Last week ended on an unhappy note for reggae fans all over the world. On Friday the news arrived that legendary producer Joe Gibbs had passed away late the previous evening at Kingston's University Hospital of the West Indies from a heart attack. Aged 65, Gibbs leaves behind a phenomenal back catalogue, the bulk of its contents accorded classic status by Jamaican music enthusiasts. However, these songs have also had a truly global impact, inspiring and influencing everything from punk to the very latest British urban music.
Born in Montego Bay in 1943, Gibbs left Jamaica to train as an engineer in the US. Returning to the island in the mid-1960s to set up a TV repair shop, he made his first foray into the music industry when he diversified into record retail from the same storefront, stacking boxes of 45s alongside the broken-down electrical equipment. In 1967, shortly after this sideline proved a runaway success, he took the natural step of setting up a DIY recording studio in the office at the rear of the building.
Despite falling into the business more or less by accident, Gibbs had a hand in some of the biggest hits of the rocksteady era, his Amalgamated imprint almost singlehandeldy establishing the genre with Roy Shirley's Hold Them. Gibbs was also canny in his collaborations, first enlisting the studio talents of a young Lee Perry and, subsequently, Winston Holness aka Niney The Observer. Both alliances paid off, and throughout this period his operation churned out a torrent of popular music by artists including Errol Dunkley, Sir Lord Comic and the Pioneers.
However, it was the later reggae sound that brought Gibbs his first international success, scoring a UK top 10 entry in 1970 with Nicky Thomas's Love of The Common People (later covered by Paul Young) and starting a more hands-on working relationship with Errol Thompson and house band the Professionals - an outfit that included among its members bassist Robbie Shakespeare and drummer Sly Dunbar.
Thanks to an unstoppable run of hits, numbering among them more than 100 Jamaican No 1s, Gibbs and Thompson would soon become known as "The Mighty Two". Throughout the mid-1970s, they continued to produce the biggest artists in Jamaica - the Mighty Diamonds, Beres Hammond and Gregory Isaacs to name but a few - releasing songs across a bewildering and continually changing array of labels.
However, the end of the decade would bring about their most famous work, from Althea & Donna's 1977 pop crossover anthem Uptown Top Ranking to Culture's Two Sevens Clash - an album that would come to be a key reference for bands including the Clash and the Slits - and JC Lodge's 1980 smash Someone Loves You Honey.
Gibbs never enjoyed quite the same level of success later in his life, but by this point he could afford to slow down, having already established himself as one of reggae's most important figures. Accordingly, he continued to enjoy the respect of both his peers and generations of younger performers. This can be seen on veteran producers' Steely & Clevie's 2002 album Old To The New: A Steely & Clevie Tribute to Joe Gibbs Classics. Yielding Sean Paul and Sasha's hit single I'm So in Love With You, this project marked four decades in the international charts for Gibbs. With that in mind, it's no stretch to say that he will be remembered as a man responsible for some of the most important music to ever have emerged from Jamaica's fertile cultural turf.
