Jackie Mittoo
b. 1948, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies, d. 1990. The self-effacing Jackie Mittoo was perhaps reggae's premier keyboard player, and had as much influence on the direction of reggae in the '60s and '70s as any single musician. Mittoo was taught to play the piano by his grandmother, first performing in public before he was 10 years old. After playing with local Kingston bands the Rivals and the Sheiks, Mittoo came to the attention of Coxsone Dodd at Studio One. At 15 Mittoo was playing piano and organ in the Skatalites, thereafter performing scouting and arranging duties for Dodd's labels. His own Got My Bugaloo (1966) 45, a rare vocal outing, was one of the best records of the ska era and presaged the arrival of rocksteady, and his work with the Soul Brothers and, later, Soul Vendors bands, helped keep Studio One ahead of rival production houses. His playing behind the Heptones, Cables, Wailers and innumerable solo acts helped create the sound of reggae for years to come: later artists and studios, such as Augustus Pablo, Channel One and almost the entire dancehall movement of the early-80s based their rhythm arrangements on material that Mittoo had pioneered in the '60s. Dodd also issued solo albums by Mittoo from 1967 onwards, and they (NOW and MACKA FAT particularly) rank amongst the most artistically pleasing organ instrumental LPs outside of Booker T and jazz maestros like Jimmy Smith. For proof, try his radical arrangement of Eleanor Rigby on NOW, transforming a worn-out song with an astonishing roots sound. 
In the mid-70s Mittoo left Dodd to work in Canada, where he set up the Stine-Jac label to moderate success, with music that was similar to that which he had left behind at Studio One, and cut several albums for producer Bunny Lee in both Jamaica and London. He also worked extensively on some fine sessions for Sugar Minott's Youth Promotion outlet, still displaying the same taste and rhythmic acumen that had always been his trademark. He was deeply respected as an elder statesman amongst Sugar's young reggae guns. He died in 1990, an event that brought about a long-overdue reassessment of his work among reggae cognoscenti. Undoubtedly, if he had been an American musician, his name would be spoken in the same breath as the greats of black music.