The drummer Style Scott has been found dead, apparently murdered, aged 58, at his home in Jamaica. He was a founding member of the Roots Radics, one of Jamaica’s most important backing bands during a time when reggae was undergoing dramatic changes, shifting from roots to the harder-edged dancehall style. He was also a longstanding member of Dub Syndicate, the experimental outfit masterminded by the inventive British producer Adrian Sherwood.

In addition to backing the singer Gregory Isaacs on the albums More Gregory (1981), Night Nurse (1982) and Out Deh! (1983), Roots Radics achieved success playing on Barrington Levy’s recordings for Henry “Junjo” Lawes that are acknowledged to have kick-started dancehall. With further hits for Michael Prophet, Yellowman, John Holt and the Wailing Souls, they became the resident band at Channel One studios, filling the void left by the dissolution of Sly Dunbar’s Revolutionaries.

Between 1979 and 1985, they were unstoppable, backing every popular artist of note, providing countless hits for producers such as Linval Thompson, Roy Cousins and Mikey Dread, and cutting a series of sublime dub albums. They helped Bunny Wailer make the transition to dancehall with Rock’N’Groove (1981) and played at Madison Square Garden, New York, with him in 1986.

Born in the village of Providence in the rural Clarendon parish of Jamaica, Lincoln Scott, nicknamed Style, was raised by his paternal grandparents on their farm. His grandfather had mastered the steel guitar and taught him the basics, but drums held greater appeal. By stretching denim fabric over empty clay pots to form makeshift instruments, he taught himself the rudiments of rhythm.

During his teens, Scott moved to Brown’s Town, where his father worked in the bauxite industry, but shifted to Montego Bay shortly thereafter to work as a waiter in tourist hotels. He then joined the Jamaica Defence Force and moved to Kingston as a member of the Jamaica Military Band Drum Corps.

In Kingston, Scott began frequenting studios such as Randy’s and Channel One, where the resident drummer, Sly Dunbar, became his chief role model. Then, after he was discharged, the guitarist Roy Hamilton took him to Studio One to play on a session, and subsequently introduced him to the guitarist Eric “Bingy Bunny” Lamont and bassist Errol “Flabba Holt” Carter, who began using Scott on recording sessions at Randy’s in the band then called Roots Rock.

Scott’s early recording sessions yielded hits such as David Isaacs’s Just Like a Sea and Sugar Minott’s Hard Time Pressure, and then he joined the Arabs, Prince Far I’s backing band, just in time for Far I’s 1978 tour of Britain. After the tour, Scott befriended Sherwood and made a fleeting contribution to his Creation Rebel project, playing on the albums Close Encounters of the Third World (1978) and Rebel Vibrations (1979).

Scott aimed to make his foot drum mirror reggae’s walking bass lines, and his offbeat rim-shots and vibrant drum rolls showed a highly creative approach. Back in Kingston, the singer Gregory Isaacs bought a drum kit for Scott to practise on, since he wanted Roots Rock to back him, and renamed the band Roots Radics, due to the radical difference of their sound.

During the Radics’ long reign, Scott maintained a parallel career in the UK, collaborating with Sherwood. He played on the first two African Head Charge albums, My Life in a Hole in the Ground (1981) and Environmental Studies (1982), and when Sherwood formed Dub Syndicate in 1982, Scott was part of it, though he did not become a full-time member until 1985, when the dramatic changes caused by Jamaican music’s digital revolution meant the Roots Radics were less in demand. In the late 1990s, he launched the Lion and Roots label to house Dub Syndicate products, as well as his own occasional productions with artists such as Luciano, Capleton and Big Youth.

He is survived by two sons and two daughters. Another daughter predeceased him.

• Style Scott (Lincoln Valentine Scott), drummer and record producer, born 29 April 1956; died 9 October 2014