The Wailing Souls started out as a three-piece - Winston 'Pipe' Matthews, George 'Buddy' Haye and Lloyd 'Bread' McDonald - known as the Renegades in 1965. In the late 60s, Matthews and McDonald recorded on Coxsone Dodd's famous Studio One label with singers Oswald Downes and Norman Davis as both The Classics and The Wailing Souls. The Wailing Souls then moved to Bob Marley's Tuff Gong label in the early 1970s and became known as Pipe and The Pipes to avoid confusion with The Wailers.