Augustus Pablo

The melodica

Horace Swaby grew up in Havendale, Kingston, in a middle-class family, practised piano in the chapel at Kingston College and left school because of frequent illness; for much of his life he had myasthenia gravis, a nerve disorder. A schoolgirl friend lent him a melodica. He walked into Herman Chin Loy's record shop carrying it, Chin Loy asked him to play, and took him into the studio. Chin Loy had already used the name Augustus Pablo on instrumentals for his Aquarius label, and Swaby took it on.

His first big hit was Java, made with his schoolmate Clive Chin at Randy's in the early 1970s. In minor keys, with spare melodica lines, it introduced what came to be called his Far East sound. He also played keyboards on Chin's dub sessions at Randy's.

Rockers

His brother Garth ran a sound system called Rockers, and Pablo played on King Tubby's sound as well. After disputes with producers over money and art, he started his own labels in 1972, Hot Stuff and then Rockers, named after his brother's sound. One of the first Hot Stuff records, Cassava Piece, provided the rhythm for Jacob Miller's Baby I Love You So and for its dub, King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown. The name Rockers came to stand for roots reggae at its most authentic, and he opened a record shop of that name on Orange Street, Kingston, which became a hangout for roots musicians.

A devout Rastafarian, he often credited Haile Selassie as producer on his sleeves. He was reclusive and rarely toured, and gave most of his energy to developing younger singers: Jacob Miller, Hugh Mundell, whom he recorded from about age twelve, Junior Delgado and others. His Rockers International compilations collect that work.

With King Tubby

King Tubby, Osbourne Ruddock, mixed in a converted bedroom in Waterhouse, Kingston, on a cast-off console whose stepped high-pass filter became his signature. The liner-note writer Randall Grass describes a very special chemistry between him and Pablo, and says Pablo rarely resorted to sound effects in his dubs. Tubby mixed Ital Dub, King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown (1976), most of East of the River Nile (1977), Original Rockers and Rockers Meets King Tubby in a Firehouse. East of the River Nile, partly recorded at Lee Perry's Black Ark, is the other essential Pablo album; Robert Christgau called it a strange, simplistic mood-music masterwork.

Later

Jacob Miller died in a car crash in 1980. Pablo worked on through the digital era, with Rising Sun (1986), mixed by Scientist, and the production of Junior Delgado's Raggamuffin Year, and he played two shows in Japan, where he said they were treated like kings and queens. In 1997 he played melodica on Primal Scream's Star, reportedly his first appearance on another artist's record. He died in Kingston on 18 May 1999. His son Addis Pablo plays piano and melodica, and in 2026 his children reopened the Rockers shop on Orange Street.