Originally known as Winston Cooper, King Stitt ranked among the pioneering figures in reggae DJing. Count Machuki first noticed him at a dance and invited him to take up the microphone on the strength of his striking dance style. Stitt, who entered the world with a facial disfigurement, turned the condition into a deliberate hook by capitalizing on Jamaicans’ enthusiasm for Western films and adopting the nickname the Ugly in tribute to Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Early audiences attended his performances chiefly to determine whether the nickname reflected his actual appearance. Over time he established himself as a capable DJ independent of the persona, drawing rhythmic phrasing and patter from Miami and New Orleans radio announcers whose signals reached Jamaica. He first teamed with Coxsone Dodd before shifting to Clancy Eccles, under whose guidance he created the well-received tracks “Fire Corner,” “Herbman Shuffle,” and “Van Cleef”—the last named for Lee Van Cleef, the “ugly one” in the Leone film—with hits that registered strongly in both Jamaica and the U.K. He continues to appear periodically at Coxsone’s Studio One.
