Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

Winston 'King Stitt' Sparks puts a record on the turntable outside the Afrique Pub, King Street, downtown Kingston, on Labour Day. - photos by Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer

The lower part of King Street, Kingston, was damp with recent rain, a row of traffic lights winking simultaneous changes to a distant Parade in one direction and the waterfront, much closer, in the other.

Outside the Afrique Pub, near the corner of King and Harbour streets, the labour of Labour Day had given way to the merriment of music, a man in black jeans and cap, white shirt and shoes, bottle of fruit juice in hand, dancing in a world of his own to early American blues. Close enough to those seated in a temporary sidewalk drinking dive, a roughly dressed man sitting on a makeshift chair of cardboard on an upturned plastic bucket bristled his grizzled jaw and said, "Play this music all night and everything is all right." A little girl, part of a party headed up from the waterfront, stopped to drop a few small legs, then moved on.

Coming up to 7:00 p.m., bodies clustered round the control tower of the sound system, set up just outside the pub's door, but it was not the turntables and amplifiers which were the focal point. It was Winston 'King Stitt' Sparks, who was being honoured for half a century's service to the sound system industry.

Bunny Goodison described Stitt as "one who has done a great deal for the sound system industry".

Beat sound system man

"Many were the days when some misguided police officers would beat a sound system man for playing," Goodison said, noting that they "still play the music, still deal with it, so after 50 years it is a business."

"So we as sound system operators, as opposed to people who just collect records, we said let us honour a man, who did so much for us," Goodison said. "This man came from the bowels of the thing and he stuck with it."

Winston Blake handed over a trophy to King Stitt "on behalf of all music lovers, sound system operators ... " He described Blake as a survivor "in an industry that was looked down on and disregarded and talked about when you had nothing else to do you became a sound system operator".

"We have proven them wrong," " Blake said.

Stitt said, "I accept this with humility and pride. During the early days sound system business was rough. In those days playing a sound system was like you smoking herb. You have to decide to jump two fence and run from the cops if you don't want to go to jail."

"One Sunday night I run from police five times, just to play sound. Some of the times I say I would give up, but I say I love it and the people love me, so I going to please the people," Stitt said.

'Go look work'

He made specific reference to a dance at Independence Lawn on Spanish Town Road, when Hugh Shearer was Prime Minister. A policeman told Stitt, "the Prime Minister say you must leave this and go look work".

"Me say is work I a work. Him say I don't business wid dat," Stitt said.

"Is not I alone had to run. U-Roy, Cuttings, Count Machukie had to run to bring this thing to where it is today," Stitt said.

He said that while there were disc jockeys on radio calling themselves selectors "and all kind a thing, we the sound system operators have done more for Jamaican music than any one of them".

"No radio station wanted to play Jamaican music, because they said it was rubbish," Stitt said.