King Stitt

Born Winston Spark (other say Winston Cooper) in Kingston, Jamaica in 1940. Due to facial disfiguration from birth King Stitt was often to be called the Ugly One. He started his musical career in 1957 when he came to the attention of Coxsone Dodd and his Downbeat Sound. He started on a Friday evening at a barbecue lawn on Fleet Street. The deejay Count Machuki who also was selecting for the sound took a liking to Stitt who he thought would dance nice to his selection. Since he could dance so well to it he would also be a good deejay he told Stitt. Stitt was then the second (or third) deejay on the Sound System for about three months - with Machuki and Red Hopeton being in front. When Machuki retired Stitt had become so popular that he ended up running the Number One set of Coxsone while U Roy was behind Number Two.

In late 1969 and the early 70's King Stitt recorded extensively for Clancy Eccles over riddims delivered by The Dynamites. These were released on Clancy Eccle's Clandisc and New Beat labels in Jamaica and in the main on the Trojan Clandisc subsidiary in the UK. Following his success with Clancy Eccles Coxsone started recording him too.