[3] His piano playing helped to define the sound and feel of ska music, as distinct from Jamaican rhythm & blues in the late 1950s.
[1] He had a huge hit in 1959 with "Easy Snappin", recorded in 1956 and played at dances by producer Coxsone Dodd before he released it three years later on his Worldisc label.
[1] The single was a number one in Jamaica and stayed on the chart for eighteen months, also selling well in the United Kingdom, and the emphasis on the off-beat was widely imitated.
[3] Although he performed on hundreds of popular records, the lack of financial reward received by Beckford was a constant complaint, as he said in 2000: "Today as I listen to music on radio and sound system and recognise that I created some of these tunes.
[4] Beckford died on 19 February 2001 as a result of injuries sustained from a machete wound to the head after an argument with a neighbour in the Washington Gardens area of Kingston.