Keith Hudson

Keith Hudson (18 March 1946 – 14 November 1984), was a Jamaican reggae artist and record producer. He is known for his influence on the dub movement.

Biography

Raised in a musical family, Hudson attended Boys Town School in Kingston, where he organized school concerts with schoolmates including Bob Marley, Delroy Wilson, and Ken Boothe. He was an ardent follower of Coxsone Dodd's Downbeat sound system and was soon hanging out with musicians such as Don Drummond, carrying his trombone into sessions at Dodd's Brentford Road studio when he was around fourteen. In the first half of the 1970s he regularly used the Soul Syndicate band, featuring George "Fully" Fullwood and Carlton "Santa" Davis.

In 1970 he began to record his own vocal tracks.

By now, he had effectively stopped recording other singers and DJs to concentrate on his own singing. He had completed a large number of backing tracks and, after the limited success of his third LP Entering the Dragon he emigrated to the United Kingdom, where he signed up with Brent Clarke's Atra label and worked at Chalk Farm Studios in London with a number of British-based reggae musicians, overdubbing his Jamaican rhythms. The first album to emanate from these sessions was Flesh of My Skin, Blood of my Blood (1974), his first UK only release and an album that has been described by Colin Larkin as "a masterpiece", and one of the first reggae albums proper, rather than merely a collection of singles and fillers. It has also been described as "reggae's first true concept album", with the lyrics relating to black history and "conscious" themes.