Beverley's was a Jamaican

record label A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the produ ...

(1961–1971) owned by the

Chinese Jamaican Chinese Jamaicans are Jamaicans of Chinese ancestry, which include descendants of migrants from China to Jamaica. Early migrants came in the 19th century; there was another moment of migration in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the descendants of ea ...

record producer

Leslie Kong Leslie Kong (20 December 1933 – 9 August 1971) was an influential Chinese-Jamaican reggae producer. Career Leslie and his two older brothers Cecil and Lloyd ran a restaurant, ice cream parlour and record shop called Beverley's in Orange Stre ...

. Beverley's was essential to the development of

ska Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walki ...

and

rocksteady Rocksteady is a music genre that originated in Jamaica around 1966. A successor of ska and a precursor to reggae, rocksteady was the dominant style of music in Jamaica for nearly two years, performed by many of the artists who helped establish ...

into

reggae Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...

. The label launched the careers of

Jimmy Cliff James Chambers OM (born 30 July 1944), known professionally as Jimmy Cliff, is a Jamaican ska, rocksteady, reggae and soul musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and actor. He is the only living reggae musician to hold the Order of Merit, t ...

and

Bob Marley Robert Nesta Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981; baptised in 1980 as Berhane Selassie) was a Jamaican singer, musician, and songwriter. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, his musical career was marked by fusing elements o ...

, having released Cliff's first recording "Dearest Beverley" in 1961 and Marley's early singles " Judge Not" and "

One Cup of Coffee 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

" in 1962.

History

The Beverley's ice-cream parlour/record shop at 135 Orange Street in Kingston was run by the Chinese-Jamaican Kong family, one of whom, Leslie Kong, started the Beverley's record label.Larkin, Colin (1998) ''The Virgin Encyclopedia of Reggae'', Virgin Books, , p.24 Kong launched the label in 1961 after

auditioned the song "Dearest Beverley" at the shop, the first release on the label being Cliff's "Hurricane Hattie", with "Dearest Beverley" on the b-side. Prior to this, Beverley's was a restaurant and records shop owned by Leslie Kong and his brothers, Fats and Cecil and never had produced records. Kong had no experience of record production but had the finances to employ the cream of Jamaica's musical talent. The association with Cliff continued, including the "Miss Jamaica" single, and Cliff's debut self-titled album. Throughout the 1960s Beverley's recorded many Jamaican artists including

Desmond Dekker Desmond Dekker (16 July 1941 – 25 May 2006) was a Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae singer-songwriter and musician. Together with his backing group The Aces (consisting of Wilson James and Easton Barrington Howard), he had one of the earlie ...

(including many of his biggest hits including "Israelites" and "007"),

The Maytals The Maytals, known from 1972 to 2020 as Toots and the Maytals, are a Jamaican musical group, one of the best known ska and rocksteady vocal groups. The Maytals were formed in the early 1960s and were key figures in popularizing reggae music. ...

("Monkey Man"),

Derrick Morgan Derrick Morgan (born 27 March 1940)Walters, Basil (2012)A New Day – Songs heralding JA’s Independence", '' Jamaica Observer'', 3 June 2012, retrieved 3 June 2012 is a Jamaican musical artist who was popular in the 1960s and 1970s. He worke ...

("Forward March"), and the Pioneers ("Long Shot Kick De Bucket"),Reggae 67-70
''Jammin Reggae Archives'' and launched the career of

with his first two singles. Marley returned to Beverley's with the Wailers for several more singles including "Soul Shakedown Party". Fellow Wailer

Peter Tosh Winston Hubert McIntosh, OM (19 October 1944 – 11 September 1987), professionally known as Peter Tosh, was a Jamaican reggae musician. Along with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer, he was one of the core members of the band the Wailers (1963� ...

also recorded solo material for the label. Matthew Sherman explains the relationship between

and Leslie Kong as, "From '69 to '71, Toots (

Toots Hibbert Frederick Nathaniel Hibbert, (8 December 1942 – 11 September 2020), better known as Toots Hibbert, was a Jamaican singer and songwriter who was the lead vocalist for the reggae and ska band Toots and the Maytals. A reggae pioneer, he perform ...

) could do no wrong recording for Leslie Kong. With the consistent nucleus of musicians, the Beverley’s All-Stars (Jackie Jackson,

Winston Wright Winston Wright (19431993) was a Jamaican keyboardist. He was a member of Tommy McCook's Supersonics, and acknowledged as Jamaica's master of the Hammond organ. Winston was born in May Pen, Jamaica on September 5, 1943 and died in Kingston, Jamaica ...

, Hux Brown, Rad Bryan,

Paul Douglas Paul Howard Douglas (March 26, 1892 – September 24, 1976) was an American politician and Georgist economist. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a U.S. Senator from Illinois for eighteen years, from 1949 to 1967. During his Senat ...

and

Winston Grennan Winston Grennan (16 September 1944 – 27 October 2000) was a Jamaican drummer, famous for session work from 1962 to 1973 in Jamaica as well as later in New York City through the 1970s and 1980s. Biography Career Grennan's career spanne ...

) and the Maytals’ brilliant harmonizing, Toots wrote and sang his unmistakable voice about every subject imaginable."Sherman, Matthew. "The Rise of Reggae and the Influence of Toots and the Maytals." The Rise of Reggae, and the Influence of Toots and the Maytals. The Dread Library, n.d. Web. 18 Sept. 2016. http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/sherman.html In 1963, Kong began licensing recordings to Black Swan, a subdivision of friend

Chris Blackwell Christopher Percy Gordon Blackwell (born 22 June 1937) is an English businessman and former record producer, and the founder of Island Records, which has been called "one of Britain's great independent labels". According to the Rock and Roll ...

Island Records Island Records is a multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded in 1959 by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall, and Leslie Kong in Jamaica, and was eventually sold to PolyGram in 1989. Island and A&M Records, anoth ...

. Later he licensed recordings to

Graeme Goodall Graeme Goodall Vanderbilt (1932 – 3 December 2014) was an Australian recording engineer and record label owner who was a key figure in the early days of Jamaica's recording industry, constructing several of the Island's studios, co-founding Is ...

's Pyramid and to

Trojan Records Trojan Records is a British record label founded in 1968. It specialises in ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub music. The label currently operates under the Sanctuary Records Group. The name ''Trojan'' comes from the Croydon-built Trojan truck t ...

by the end of the 60s. The Beverley's label folded with the death of Leslie Kong in 1971.

References

{{Authority control Reggae record labels Jamaican record labels Defunct record labels of Jamaica Record labels established in 1961 Record labels disestablished in 1971

History

See also

References