Major exhibition charts rise of record label that spawned musical and cultural movement in late 1970s
Scrawled on the back of an Embassy cigarette packet are Jerry Dammers’ first attempts to define the 2 Tone “rude boys” after a question from the press in the late 1970s. They like “bluebeat and ska … reggae and soul” and wear “trilbys, bowler and pork pie hats … pinstripe suits, button-down shirts and checked scarves”.
Dammers, who founded the 2 Tone record label in Coventry in 1979, little knew how the description he jotted down would become the image of a hugely popular musical and cultural movement.
