It is the man that produced the records you never could hear. There was no internet to find the song. The radio stations would not play his singles as they were deemed to rude and crude and that is what they are. So how did you hear his stuff? You had to BUY the singles, thus it put him higher in the charts, which really annoyed the radio stations of the time. Well really it was just Radio One.
So who is Judge Dread? He was in fact Alexander Minto Hughes who was really a reggae and ska artist. Alexander’s love for reggae happened when he lodged in Brixton and developed so well that he was the only white man to have a reggae record at No.1 in Jamaica.
Alexander did a lot of jobs through his life time from wrestler to bouncer, and recording artist, debt collector and a DJ. The naughty songs were evoked after a song called Big 5 by Prince Buster in 1969, so Judge decided to get in on the fun and made Big Six on Trojan Records, getting to No. 11 in 1972. Big Seven followed with dirty nursery rhymes. It was so successful that Big Eight did the same. In fact he had eleven banned records in the British charts which is another record.
He was also writing a song for Elvis Presley, but Elvis died before he could record it. Now that would have been something I would have liked to hear. Elvis singing bit 10?
Sadly Judge himself died of a heart attack in 1998.
Let the 70s music ease the stress from your bones.Take off your disco shoes and sit yourself down on my giant bean bag, that's it just sit back and relax. Let me pry those memories from the deepest corners of your mind by taking you for a stroll through the archives.
