Count Matchuki

Winston Cooper (c.1939–1995), better known as Count Matchuki or Count Machuki, was the first Jamaican deejay. Cooper was born c.1939 in Kingston, Jamaica, and began working on sound systems in the 1950s, when the music played was largely American R&B. His stage name of Count Matchuki derived from his habit of chewing matchsticks. He initially worked on Tom Wong's Tom the Great Sebastian system and later the Tokyo the Monarch system, before moving on to Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's Downbeat Sound System. He added talkovers to the songs, emulating the jive talk of American radio DJ's at the request of Dodd, who became familiar with the US style on his visits to the States to buy records to play on his sound system. He thus originated a deejay...