Every so often Dodd would pull out a wad of bills from his back pocket and hand me some.’įor Vester, an award winning filmmaker who had spent most of his working life jet setting round the world on behalf of Rank’s advertising division, this marked a clear career departure but one which he embraced with passion. ‘I was the unofficial photographer – there was never ever any contract but I had the run of the studio – people couldn’t just walk around the place without permission. This marked the beginning of Vester’s 12- year association with Studio One as the label’s photographer, an arrangement that was only ended by Dodd’s sudden death from a heart attack at the age of 72. But a few weeks later he asked me if he could use one of my photos for an album cover.’ He said “what’s in it for me?” I said “nothing”.
‘Dodd was very approachable and one day I asked if I could take photographs. ‘It was awesome meeting the guys I used to listen to on record and watching great music being cut. ‘I was completely bowled over,’ says Vester, 63. ‘We got to talking and when I told him about my interest in ska he was keen to take me down there.’ It was to be the first of several visits he made with Duffus, who’d had a number of hits with Studio One back in the day. The year was 1992 and Vester, a film maker and photographer, had been taken to the studios by ska balladeer Chandley Duffus, whom he’d met in a rum bar in the north of the island while working on a tourism brochure. He was the millionaire record mogul Clement “Coxsone’ Dodd’, the man who had turned the studios into a non-stop hit factory and launched the careers of almost every reggae star of note.Īnd lounging under the shade of the lignum vitae tree in the yard were some of the vintage singers who helped make Studio One in the Jamaican Motown. Then a friendly looking chap dressed in tatty shorts and a cheap T shirt and sandals came limping over to introduce himself. ‘It looked pretty awful – just raw concrete, the sort of building that you would normally pass by quickly,’ he recalls smiling. When Ron Vester first visited 13 Brentford Rd in Kingston, home of the famous Studio One recording studios, he couldn’t help noticing that it could do with a lick of paint.
Ron Vester’s photos of vintage Jamaican reggae stars offer a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse of one of the world’s most successful recording studios