As a former bouncer at Brixton’s Ram Jam club, Alexander Hughes met Prince Buster and Derrick Morgan.
As a debt collector for Trojan Records, he got to know the harsh realities of the music business.
Undeterred, as Judge Dread he forged a singular career, and his everyman approach to ska scored him more UK hits than any reggae artist in the 70s, including Bob Marley.
Always a larger-than-life individual, Dread died on-stage in Canterbury in 1998 after a heart attack.
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