Keith Hudson - "The Dark Prince of Reggae".

Having watched the DVD Dub Echoes got me thinking of somebody who I feel is almost criminally ignored sometimes in dub music discussions Keith Hudson.
Hudson was a producer, writer, arranger and singer, who was born into a musically inclined family; His grandfather was a noted musician who played with many Cuban bands, in Kingston, Jamaica in 1946. Hudson's own musical education began though as a kind of roadie for Skatalite and trombone king Don Drummond, as he used to hold Drummond's trombone for him, just so he could be in the studio. At the age of 21 however, after training as a dentist, but having been inspired by Coxsone's Downbeat sound system, he decided to sink his earnings into starting his own record label, Inbidimts (meaning 'know sound' according to Hudson's sleeve notes to 'Furnace'). He got off to a great start with a recording of "Old Fashioned Way", with its timeless rhythm and melody, sung by the immaculate Ken Boothe, and it reached number one in Jamaica. Due to this chart success, the unexpectedly hot Hudson was soon producing some of the biggest names, and soon-to-be biggest names in reggae, John Holt, Delroy Wilson, Alton Ellis, and he also had the vision to recognise the soon-to-be DJ phenomenon by cutting U Roy's first tune "Dynamic Fashion Way" long before Duke Reid got the DJ into the studio for Treasure Isle. All of these artists benefited from what would be Hudson's trademark production style: groove-centred, bass/drum-dominated, lean and mean stripped-down riddims.

1972 proved to be Hudson's watershed year as he produced Big Youth's biggest ever hit Ace 90 Skank, and this places the producer at the pinnacle of Jamaican popular music. With this Hudson, the self-confessed "flash little yout" released a flood of Jamaican 7" releases on his own labels such as Rebind, Mamba (after the black and deadly snake) and the already mentioned Imbidimts, that were more potent tunes, laced with menace. Tunes such as 'Satan Side', 'Don't Think About Me' and 'A Place In Africa'. However, this doom-laden, brooding music did not find an enthusiastic audience in Jamaica and, it was this type of sound that led to him being known ominously as "The Dark Prince of Reggae".
Like so much of the enduring music produced on the island over the decades these releases were destined to be pressed locally in small quantities or released overseas, and thus Hudson's decided to move away from Jamaica to continue his musical career.
A batch of UK-only, highly conceptualised LPs were released such as 'Entering the Dragon', 'Torch of Freedom' and 'Flesh of My Skin...', plus the classic LP 'Pick A Dub', all of which gained great critical acclaim, and encouraged by this and perhaps through his musical and physical dislocation from Jamaica, Hudson decided to concentrate on his own music now rather than producing for others. His vocals, which have been variously described as "eerie", "awkward" and "discordant" sit perfectly within a dub mix. In recognition of this and the popularity of his dubs on UK sound systems such as Fatman, he decided to take the pioneering step of releasing a dub set, 'Brand', a year or so before the accompanying vocal LP 'Rasta Communication'.
In 1979 Hudson though decided to return to DJ production duties, this time for his friend, Militant Barry, and utilised many of the riddims from 'Brand' for Barry's set 'Green Valley', before returning back to his own material with 1981's 'Playing It Cool, Playing It Right'. In an interview in the same year, Hudson, now firmly based in New York, expressed his desire for Jamaican acceptance and to be able to play there live for the first time, but with the failure of these releases to connect with a Jamaican public now obsessed with Dancehall, the man's musical exile was made complete when at the age of 38, he succumbed to lung cancer in1984, leaving reggae without of one it's most adventurous and unheralded producers and performers.