King Stitt
| King Stitt | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Winston Sparkes |
| Born |
17 September 1940 Kingston, Jamaica |
| Died | 31 January 2012 (aged 71) Kingston, Jamaica |
| Genres | Reggae |
| Occupation(s) | Jamaican reggae musician and DJ |
| Instruments | Vocals |
Winston Sparkes (17 September 1940 – 31 January 2012), better known as King Stitt, was a Jamaican pioneer DJ.
He earned the nickname as a boy because of his stuttering and decided to use it as his stage name. Stitt began deejaying on Clement Dodd's Sir Coxsone's Downbeat Sound System in 1956.
Count Machuki, the original Jamaican deejay, noticed him for his dancing and offered him to try his hand on the mic. Stitt soon built his own deejay set, occasionally replacing him and eventually becoming one of the most popular deejays on the island's dances. He became King Stitt when he was crowned "king of the deejays" in 1963, in the heyday of ska.
Following the folding of Sir Coxsone's Downbeat's sound system around 1968 (as Coxsone preferred to concentrate on recordings), Stitt found himself working as a mason in Ocho Rios. He had been deejaying at the mic for over ten years when he was first recorded over brand new reggae rhythms in 1969, creating some of the first deejay records ever.
Born with a facial malformation, Stitt took advantage of it, calling himself "The Ugly One", in reference to the Sergio Leone spaghetti western film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Stitt's first and most prolific record releases came from producer Clancy Eccles with classic deejay tracks that included "Fire Corner" (1969), "Lee Van Cleef", "Herbman Shuffle", "King of Kings", "Vigorton 2" and "Dance Beat". All were released on Eccles' Clandisc record label.
Adored by skinheads and mods in England at the time, he was crowned the Boss DJ. As Stitt's first deejay style records hit in England, several Jamaican producers tried to record other "veteran" deejays such as Dennis Alcapone and U Roy (both of whom were actually still in their twenties).
Upon the success of the first Stitt releases, Clement Dodd, aka Sir Coxson, began to release his own King Stitt recordings on now scarce 7-inch Studio One label singles. In the 1990s a full album of Stitt deejaying over late 1950s and early '60s recordings, such as Owen Grey's "On the Beach", was released by Coxsone and entitled Dancehall '63. A full CD of hard-to-find 7-inch singles called Reggae Fire Beat, including his classic work for Clancy Eccles, was released on the Jamaican Gold CD label.
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