Joe Gibbs, R.I.P.

In addition to Miles Davis aide de camp Teo Macero, another renowned producer passed away last week, Jamaican fixture Joe Gibbs, whose career stretched from the birth of rocksteady in the 1960s to the tip of modern dancehall. A shop owner and engineer who moved into the record-making business in the late ’60s, Gibbs worked as both label owner and mixing board operator with seemingly everyone indexed in your reggae reference guide of choice, though a special note should be made for his hit-minting, long-running collaboration with Errol Thompson. Even listing the only the most well-known records that bear Gibbs’ name starts to look like a rundown of the island’s greatest hits: Culture’s Two Sevens Clash, Althea and Donna’s “Uptown Top Ranking,” Prince Far I’s “Heavy Manners,” hits from Dennis Brown and Big Youth and the Heptones. Go deeper and you’ve got the beginnings of a few dozen masterful reggae mixtapes, provided the compiler could bear to pare down his gem-studded catalog. The mighty Gibbs was finally felled last Thursday by a heart attack at 65. [Guardian]