Prince Buster, at 78; trailblazer of ska . By Jon Pareles New York
Times . NEW YORK - Prince Buster, a performer and producer who
transformed Jamaican music in the 1960s as a trailblazer of the ska
beat, died Thursday in Miami. He was 78. His wife, Mola Ali, confirmed
his death to the Associated Press, saying he had been hospitalized with
heart problems. Under his own name and as the producer for many
singers, Prince Buster released hundreds of songs in Jamaica. Sessions
he produced as the 1960s began are widely credited as the first ska
singles. They introduced a distinctively Jamaican emphasis on the
backbeat, underlined on guitar and saxophone, that would persist as
Jamaican pop evolved toward reggae. In the late 1960s, Prince Buster
had another influential guise: hit singles in which he spoke as Judge
Dread, ruling harshly against the criminal exploits of Jamaica's "rude
boys. Cecil Bustamente Campbell was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on May
24, 1938. He performed with teenage groups in Kingston; he also became
a boxer, taking the name Prince Buster. In the 1950s he began working
for one of Jamaica's top producers and sound-system disc jockeys,
Coxsone Dodd. By the end of the decade he had opened a record store and
was playing street parties with his own sound system, the Voice of the
People. He decided to start producing songs as well as spinning them.
Jamaicans were listening to, and imitating, the American R&B that
reached the island on radio stations from New Orleans and Miami. Prince
Buster's productions were more deliberately Jamaican. His production of
the Folkes Brothers' "Oh Carolina," recorded in 1959, meshed the
traditional Nyabinghi drumming of a Rastafarian musician, Count Ossie,
with what would come to be known as a ska beat. That beat, in songs
like Eric Morris's "Humpty Dumpty," made for huge hits in Jamaica and
also had an impact in 1960s Britain. Prince Buster's instrumental "Al
Capone" was a Top 20 hit there in 1965. By the end of the 1960s ska had
given way to the slower rocksteady beat, a precursor of reggae. Prince
Buster adapted, notably with his singles using his Judge Dread
character. But in the early 1970s he gave up producing music and
concentrated on business ventures, including a jukebox company, and
moved to Miami. Punk-era rock fans were introduced to Prince Buster
through "One Step Beyond," the title track of the 1979 debut album by
the English ska-revival band Madness, which was a sped-up remake of an
instrumental Prince Buster released in 1964. The group had taken its
name from Prince Buster's song "Madness Is Gladness. Other ska-revival
groups such as the Specials and the English Beat also recorded Prince
Buster's songs.
