Derrick Morgan got his first exposure, doing his Little Richard imitations

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The early sound system was functioning as a kind of ‘live and direct’ radio program with the ‘selector’ in the role of the disc jockey. In front of a live audience, the selector would spin the top songs of the day. The format was modeled on the radio stations in New Orleans that played the R&B Jamaicans loved. To imitate the radio jocks, the selector would introduce the records with a little jive talk. He might follow that with hoots and hollers, rhythmic interjections - Hep! Hep! Hep! or Yupyup Yupyup. Like the jazz ‘scat’ singers, they used nonsense syllables - ‘ska ba do, ska ba dooba day…’ The deejay wanted people up on the floor and dancing themselves into a great thirst so they would ‘buy out the bar’, making the whole undertaking a financial success. This practice was referred to as “toasting”, as in public speaking or the act of offering up a few words on behalf of someone before sharing a drink. It was mostly introduction with the instrumental following. Many people consider the first toaster to really ‘deejay’ on a sound to have been Count Machuki. Count Matchuki, like many other reggae legends, started his public life as a dancer but, by 1950, he was working as a selector for Tom the Great Sebastian. He had that little flavour in him, and he brought it on with a lot of style, Clive Chin remembers him carrying around a particular book. “There was one he said he bought out of Beverly’s [record shop] back in the ‘60s. The book was called The Jives of Dr. Hepcat and it had sort of slangs, slurs in it and he was reading it, looking it over, and he found that it would be something that he could explore and study, so he took that book and it helped him.”