Hedley Jones

Hedley H. G. Jones (12 November 1917 – 1 September 2017) was a Jamaican musician, audio engineer, inventor, trade unionist and writer. He designed and played one of the first solid-bodied electric guitars, designed and built Jamaica's first sound systems and traffic lights, and in 2011 was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal for distinguished eminence in the field of music.

He was born near Linstead, Jamaica, the son of David and Hettie Jones, and started making music as a child. He made his own cello at the age of 14, as well as a banjo. In 1935 he moved to Kingston, where he heard Marcus Garvey speak, and worked as a tailor, cabinet maker, bus conductor, repairing sewing machines, radios and gramophones. He said: "I was what people called a jack of all trades. I could fix everything." His main work was as a proofreader, with the Gleaner and Jamaica Times.

He also played banjo in a Hawaiian jazz band, before forming his own Hedley Jones Sextet. Inspired by the recordings of Charlie Christian, but unable to afford an imported guitar, he built himself a solid-bodied electric guitar, and was featured with it on the front page of The Gleaner in September 1940, at about the same time that Les Paul was doing similar pioneering work in the US. Jones continued to build guitars for other Jamaican musicians in the years that followed.

In 1943 he joined the British Royal Air Force, trained as a radar engineer at the Royal Technical College in Glasgow, and served in Europe during World War II, returning to Jamaica in 1946. He started a radio servicing business in Kingston, and imported jazz records from the US. He began making amplifiers in the late 1940s, and played jazz and Cuban records through them at his record store, Bop City. Jones built powerful amplifiers, with the technologically advanced capacity to distinguish and enhance treble, mid-range and bass frequencies. He later wrote:

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