EDIT: Coxsone Dodd's son stated today, 10 January, in the pages of the Gleaner that King Stitt had not passed away, contrary to what our sources told us. "He is not doing very well, he said. He is still weak and is not eating. He has lost a lot of weight, and doesn't talk much."
He was the oldest Jamaican deejay still alive: King Stitt, one of the pioneers of the genre, passed away this weekend. He had been ill for several months and had been in hospital since the end of December.
Nicknamed The Ugly One in reference to his disfigured face and to Sergio Leone's film "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", he turned that handicap into an asset.
Born Winston George Sparkes, he learned the tricks of the trade from Count Machuki, who held the mic in Tom The Great Sebastian's sound system. He recorded his first tracks for Clancy Eccles, including the unmissable Lee Van Cleef - aka The Ugly One, Fire Corner and Herbman Shuffle.
From 1970 he also recorded for Coxsone Dodd at Studio One, where he became the studio's unmistakable doorman in the early 1980s. You can see him in the documentary "Studio One Story", released in 2002 and recently reissued (news of 22/09/2011), an extract of which you will find below.
In France, he was seen at work on the decks in 2004, at the I-Land festival in Lille, or more recently at the Garance Reggae Festival 2011, where he performed as part of the Studio One Session.
