At 72, Record producer Clive Hunt is a titan in reggae music. With a career spanning more than five decades, he has produced and engineered some of the genre’s biggest hits while leading a life as colorful as his compositions. The father of 19 children—seven more than Bob Marley—he faced personal struggles, including a stint in rehab in the early ’90s.
“I’m afraid when somebody hears about my 19 children, it’s because I lived like a sailor. And I can tell you, yes, I did live like that for many, many years, across many continents and places. I’d go there to do one song and end up staying for a year or six months working. Everybody wanted me to work,” he said.
Still alert with a razor-sharp memory, Hunt opened up to World Music Views about the exploitation of reggae by big industry players, revealing the gritty details and behind-the-scenes tales that make up his legacy and the decisions he made, driven purely by his passion for music.
“I’ve been a musician since I was a little boy and I just dedicated myself to music,” he says, putting on his shades for our Zoom conversation.
An astute student of his craft, he reflects, “Every day of my life, I had either a book or an instrument,” noting that this routine continued until his exceptional musical abilities caught the attention of military brass, leading to an unexpected turn in his career.
“When I finally became a soldier, they sent me to study in England. It was a special honor, you know. I came back, and I was in the army, training to be a bandmaster at 19. Yeah, they wanted me,” he recalls.
Hunt became the youngest bandmaster ever in the British Commonwealth, dedicating his life to the army until a friend, Bunny Brown of Derek Harriott’s Crew, asked him to do a recording session at Harry J’s Studio.
“That was my entrance into the business. The studio is next to the stadium, and the army barracks are next to the stadium. So I went there, did the session, and they were quite impressed with how I worked. Geoffrey Chung, the great Geoffrey Chung, asked me if I could come back the next day. And here I am, from then to now,” Hunt explains.
Over the years, Hunt has arranged and composed songs for Beres Hammond, Jimmy Cliff, Etana, Maxi Priest, Dennis Brown, Ritchie Spice, and many other Jamaican acts. However, it was commonplace for artists and engineers from the 1960s and ’70s, to get either one time payments or no royalties for their work due to improper paperwork.
“I haven’t collected for, I’d say, 80 percent of what I’ve done, and people put their name on it,” he recalls. “The good stuff, and people put their name, come out written by them, produced by them, arranged by them.”
Hunt tells the story of one such song: “I can tell you a few big cases. Like, ‘Someone Loves You Honey’ with J.C. Lodge. Everybody knows what’s the case. In fact, J.C. Lodge just did something a month ago on the internet where she said she never made any money from it. It was Clive who took her to the studio, and Clive produced the song.”
“Someone Loves You Honey” was written by Don Devaney and first released in 1974 by American country music singer Johnny Rodriguez on his fourth album, “Songs About Ladies and Love.” Lodge’s version, released in 1980 on her debut album of the same name by the German record label Ariola, topped the charts in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands.
“Joe Gibbs took the song, put it out, and put his name on it. He was sued by the writer who wrote the song. I got the song from a Charlie Pride album,” Hunt says.
Gibbs, who died in 2008 at age 65, is described by the Guardian as ‘an astute businessman who created an environment for Jamaican musicians to record.’ But Hunt counters, “It was we producing the stuff, and he’s in his office. We deliver it, we deliver it,” he repeated. “And it’s a common thing in our reggae.”
Among Hunt’s outstanding royalty payments are 30 albums now owned by Universal Records, including the Grammy-nominated album “Man With The Fun” by Maxi Priest, released under Virgin Records in 1996.
“I produced the hit song from the album. It is called ‘Message in a Bottle,’ a Sting cover, and it became top 5 in Japan. Not a reggae chart, the national chart. I was very pleased about it, and I always talk about it. I’ve never received any royalty or anything because the man who was managing Maxi Priest died many years ago.”
Despite being credited as a producer and engineer on the track alongside Sly and Robbie and Maxi Priest, Hunt notes that on the Grammy nomination certificate, he is only listed as an engineer. “I am credited as engineer, could you believe?” he questions. “I have done everything in the industry except make money.”
Hunt recalls a disheartening moment when he came out of rehab in the early ’90s: “There was no reggae being made in Jamaica at the time. The music that was being made, nothing for reggae, and what hurt me so much is they still call it reggae. Whenever they want to sell things out of Jamaica, they call it reggae. They even have jerk pork called reggae jerk pork. ‘Reggae’ is a name that they prostitute.”
