Jerry Dammers

Jeremy David Hounsell Dammers GCOT (born 22 May 1955) is a British musician who was a founder, keyboard player and primary songwriter of the Coventry-based ska band The Specials (also known as The Special A.K.A.) and later The Spatial AKA Orchestra. Through his foundation of the record label Two Tone, his work blending political lyrics and punk with Jamaican music, and his incorporation of 1960s retro clothing, Dammers is a pivotal figure of the ska revival. He has also been acknowledged in his work for racial unity. Dammers was born in Ootacamund, Tamil Nadu, South India, the son of Horace Dammers who was later Dean of Bristol Cathedral from 1973 to 1987. Jerry Dammers attended King Henry VIII School, Coventry.

He left India at the age of 2, first living in Sheffield, then moving to Coventry at the age of 10. His initial music influences were 60's bands like The Who, The Small Faces, The Kinks, which made him want to be in a band, and he was also influenced by soul music.Dammers was a young mod in the 1960s while at school then became a hippie, before becoming a skinhead. Dammers decided at the age of 10 he was going to have a band, and spent his teenage years learning music and writing songs. He played in a range of bands, from reggae punk, to country and western. Dammers had been a member of The Cissy Stone Soul Band however he couldn't get them to play any of his work. He studied art at Coventry's Lanchester Polytechnic (now Coventry University), where he met Horace Panter. Frustrated at only doing covers, Dammers was asked to leave the Cissy Stone Soul band, and then played keyboards with Hard Top 22, a reggae band that had many members that would later become The Selecter.While at a gig in his teens, someone threw a pint glass at his face, knocking out his two front teeth, which he never had repaired.