King Tubby

King Tubby (Osbourne Ruddock, 1941-1989) was a Jamaican sound engineer from Kingston whose remixes of reggae rhythms laid the ground for dub. At the mixing desk of his own studio in the Waterhouse district he reduced songs to drums and bass, brought vocals and instruments in and out of the mix, and soaked them in echo and reverb. Ruddock ran an electrical repair shop, and in 1968 he set up Tubby's Hometown Hi-Fi, the sound system where U-Roy made his name as a toaster.