Island Records co-founder Graeme Goodall has died, aged 82. The Australian-born engineer died of natural causes at his Atlanta, Georgia home on 4 December (14).

Goodall worked in radio as an audio engineer before he moved to London in the mid-1950s where he trained at the International Broadcasting Company. While designing and installing the first commercial FM service in Jamaica, he became a huge reggae and calypso fan and assisted Chris Blackwell with the recording of singer Laurel Aitkens’ Boogie In My Bones, which became an international hit – the first for Blackwell’s fledgling Island Records.

The duo went on to discover and record Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Millie Small and many of today’s reggae icons.

Goodall left Island in the mid-1960s and started his own Doctor Bird and Pyramid labels, recording hits such as Desmond Dekker’s Israelites.

He became a Jamaican music stalwart until the late 1970s, when he moved to America and became a top engineer at Sony.