Charlie Collins, (1937 – March 2018), known professionally as Sir Collins or Clancy Collins, was a

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispan ...

n-born British

music producer A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure. Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...

, record label owner and sound system operator. He was a pioneer in sound system culture in the UK and was part of the development of

deejaying A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile D ...

or toasting in

ska Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a wal ...

and

rocksteady Rocksteady is a music genre that originated in Jamaica around 1966. A successor of ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was the dominant style of music in Jamaica for nearly two years, performed by many of the artists who helped establish ...

. He co-founded the

Four Aces Club The Four Aces Club was a pioneering music and recreational space on Dalston Lane in Hackney, London. Based in a building that had formerly been the North London Colosseum and Amphitheatre and then a cinema, in the 1960s and 1970s the club becam ...

in Dalston, London with Newton Dunbar. In 1967 he started the Collins Down Beat record label in London, releasing rocksteady productions by

Bunny Lee Edward O'Sullivan Lee OD (23 August 1941 – 6 October 2020), better known as Bunny "Striker" Lee, was a Jamaican record producer. He was known as a pioneer of the United Kingdom reggae market, licensing his productions to Trojan Records ...

and Sir Collins including the label's first release “Sir Collins Special” by

Lester Sterling Lester Sterling OD (born 31 January 1936),Musicians Bio
", Alpha Old Boys Association, retrie ...

, which is thought to be one of the first songs with deejaying over the music.

References

1937 births 2018 deaths Musicians from Kingston, Jamaica Jamaican record producers Jamaican reggae musicians {{UK-record-producer-stub