The bass player Jackie Jackson, who has died aged 79, was one of the cornerstones of Jamaican popular music. In addition to being the bassist in Toots and the Maytals for more than 50 years, Jackson provided substantial and melodic bass lines underpinning some of the most important reggae hits of the 1960s and 70s, helping tracks such as The Israelites by Desmond Dekker, The Liquidator by Harry J Allstars and the Upsetters’ Return of Django reach the UK Top 10 in 1969.
Equally inspired by the pumping approach Lloyd Brevett used on his acoustic upright in the Skatalites, and the electric hooks of James Jamerson at Motown, Jackson was also an important part of the rock steady craze that swept Jamaica in the mid-60s. A mainstay of the house band at Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle studio, the Supersonics, he had his first recording session there for Alton Ellis’s smash I Have Got a Date (1966, later re-released as Girl I’ve Got a Date), with Jackson’s buoyant bass a propulsive engine that helped make the song one of the defining releases of the rock steady era.
