Josey Wales
Joseph Winston Sterling took his stage name from Clint Eastwood's outlaw and, in 1977, started deejaying on Kingston's small-time Roots Unlimited sound system, then moved up to U-Roy's King Sturgav Hi-Fi, spending three and a half years there and earning the nickname "The Colonel" alongside sparring partner Charlie Chaplin, "The Principal." Producer Henry "Junjo" Lawes brought him into the studio in 1983; the single "Leggo Mi Hand" turned a sound-system reputation into a national hit, and further singles kept him, by one critic's account, among Jamaica's two or three biggest deejays of the era. Where his chart rival Yellowman leaned into slackness, Wales stayed pointedly conscious and Rastafarian. "I have a genuine love for the music and respect for the craft," he told the Jamaica Observer in 2014 — a fitting epitaph for a sound-system voice turned hitmaking recording star who never changed what he sounded like.
Wales named his own entry point into music without hesitation. "As a youth, U Roy... was my idol; it was really him who inspired me to get into music," he told the Belgian outlet Rebelbase in 2008. "It was the whole package that appealed to me: his style, his craft and the dress code he upheld." That admiration carried him into U-Roy's own King Sturgav Hi-Fi sound system around 1978, where he apprenticed for three and a half years — the same rig where he earned the nickname "The Colonel," years before producer Junjo Lawes ever put him on record.
listen forPlay U-Roy's 1970 "Wear You to the Ball" — his declamatory chat threaded between the vocal group the Paragons' lines over a rocksteady beat — against Wales's 1983 breakthrough "Leggo Mi Hand." Both ride an unhurried, conversational cadence, phrases dropped into the open spaces of the rhythm rather than crammed on top of it. What changed is the register: U-Roy stays light and melodic, where Wales roughens the same approach into the gruff, half-spoken growl that made him instantly recognizable in early-'80s dancehall.