Doris Darlington

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 this need with a turntable, an amplified sound system and a collection of records, and eventually the space expanded into a bar with a canteen in the back at which Darlington would cook. However, whenever Dodd went on trips to purchase music, he would leave Nanny in charge of the show, running the technical and creative side of the Downbeat sound system. This made her "the first female sound system operator".^[2]

Dodd later said of her contribution to music that "She is the founding mother of everything, for without her nothing would’ve happened".^[3] Dodd also named one of his sublabels D. Darling after her.^[4] Darlington also ran the record store, Music Land,^[5] in Spanish Town, Jamaica. (Some sources describe her as running a record store called Muzik City,^[6] which is also associated with Coxsone Dodd).^[7]

Darlington was often present at Studio One recording studio, and sometimes took an active role from at least 1961 to the early 1990s, when she was listed as producer on George Faith's 1992 album Just the Blues.^[8] The bulk of her credits are from the early 1960s, when she produced a small string of rocksteady, Jamaican rhythm and blues and jazz singles.^[9]