Doris Darlington

Doris Albertha Darlington (died 25 June 1998) was a Jamaican Maroon who owned a food shop and later a liquor store in Kingston, Jamaica, in the 1950s and 1960s. This site provided the initial space for her son Coxsone Dodd to begin playing music for customers, a practice that eventually led to his founding Studio One and becoming one of the island's key musical forces. When her son was away buying records to play on the sound system, Darlington set up and ran the sound system herself, and thus can be named one of Jamaica's first sound system operators, and a force in the development of ska, rocksteady and reggae music. Darlington also ran a record store in Jamaica, was often present at Studio One recording studios and involved in producing music in the early 1960s.

Darlington was nicknamed "Nanny" after the famed female leader Nanny of the Maroons.

Biography

Darlington was a descendant of the Jamaican Maroons, communities descended from escaped Africans who fought for and established free communities in the Jamaican interior. In the 1950s she owned a food shop whose customers were interested in hearing the latest R&B tunes from the US. Her son Clement "Coxsone" Dodd began to meet...

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