It can hardly be said that Jamaican microphone man King Stitt, who died today at the age of 71, was a conventional pin-up boy in his time. In fact the man was a bit of a physical mess due to a facial deformity with which he was born. But he made the absolute best of it. Stitt nicknamed himself The Ugly One (inspired by the spaghetti western The Good, The Bad and the Ugly). He then proceeded to help shape the MC tradition in reggae over the next 50-plus years, and inspire less-than-handsome rhymers (like albino MCs Yellowman, Mellow Yellow and Purpleman) to pick up the mic and overcome their looks with expert vocal hype. 

Born Winston Sparkes in 1940, Stitt began deejaying (as Jamaica used to call MCing back in the day) at age 16 with Coxsone Dodd’s sound system, called Sir Coxsone’s Downbeat. Although Stitt’s mic work prefigured rap, his vocals plugged into the more laidback, syncopated, hype-man style of the day, with his rhymes spread across bars rather than sticking strictly in time to the beat.

Stitt’s style and courage stunned Jamaica’s dancehalls and in 1963, he was crowned “king of the deejays.” By 1969 he had recorded a bunch of singles for various labels, including his most famous, the Clancy Eccles-produced “Fire Corner,” which featured his later-much-sampled intro line, “No matter what the people say/This sound lead the way…”
 

 
Throughout reggae music’s development over the past half-century—from ska to rocksteady to roots to dancehall to today’s bashment—Stitt has remained a stalwart reminder of the determination it took back in the day to become a star.
 
Producers like Bruno Blum recognized the history, and let the Ugly One do his thing on “The Original Ugly Man,” Blum’s remix of Serge Gainsbourg’s “Des Laids Des Laids” from the 2001 reissue of Aux Armes Et Cetera, one of the French crooner’s late-‘70s reggae sets.

 
Here’s a bit of the King in raw action in the dancehall from the Studio One Story DVD, doing a bit of tune selecting as he chats…

 
…and here’s an interview with Stitt about his early days (with apologies for the out-of-synch audio)