Beverley's was a Jamaican
record label
"Big Three" music labels
A record label or record company is a brand or trademark of Sound recording and reproduction, music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a Music publisher, ...
active between 1961 and 1971, owned by the record producer
Leslie Kong
Leslie Kong (20 December 1933 – 9 August 1971) was a Jamaican reggae producer.
Early life
Kong was born into a Chinese-Jamaican family. He had a "relatively comfortable upbringing" and attended St. George's College in Kingston.
Career ...
. Beverley's was essential to the development of
ska 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 during the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its Jamaican diaspora, diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay", was the first ...
. The label launched the careers of
Jimmy Cliff
James Chambers, Jamaican Order of Merit, 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 hol ...
and
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, he fused elements of reggae, ska and rocksteady and was renowned for his distinctive voca ...
, having released Cliff's first recording "Dearest Beverley" in 1961 and Marley's early singles "
Judge Not" and "
One Cup of Coffee" in 1962.
History
The Beverley's ice-cream parlour/record shop at 135 Orange Street in
Kingston, Jamaica
Kingston is the Capital (political), capital and largest city of Jamaica, located on the southeastern coast of the island. It faces a natural harbour protected by the Palisadoes, a long spit (landform), sand spit which connects the town of Por ...
, 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
Jimmy Cliff
James Chambers, Jamaican Order of Merit, 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 hol ...
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 (including many of his biggest hits such as "
Israelites
Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age.
Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...
" and "
007
The ''James Bond'' franchise focuses on James Bond (literary character), the titular character, a fictional Secret Intelligence Service, British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels ...
"),
the Maytals ("
Monkey Man"),
Derrick Morgan ("Forward March"), and the
Pioneers ("Long Shot Kick De Bucket"),
[Reggae 67-70](_blank)
''Jammin Reggae Archives'' and launched the career of
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, he fused elements of reggae, ska and rocksteady and was renowned for his distinctive voca ...
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 (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 Bob Marley and the Wa ...
also recorded solo material for the label.
Matthew Sherman explains the relationship between
the Maytals and Leslie Kong as,
In 1963, Kong began licensing recordings to
Black Swan
The black swan (''Cygnus atratus'') is a large Anatidae, waterbird, a species of swan which breeds mainly in the southeast and southwest regions of Australia. Within Australia, the black swan is nomadic, with erratic migration patterns dependent ...
, a subdivision of friend
Chris Blackwell
Christopher Percy Gordon Blackwell OJ (born 22 June 1937) is a Jamaican-British 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 Hall ...
's
Island Records
Island Records is a multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded in Jamaica by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall, and Leslie Kong in 1959, and was eventually sold to PolyGram in 1989. Island and A&M Records, another ...
. Later he licensed recordings to
Graeme Goodall's Pyramid and to
Trojan Records
Trojan Records is a British record label founded by Jamaican Duke Reid, Lee Gopthal and Chris Blackwell in 1968. It specialises in ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub music. The label currently operates under the Sanctuary Records Group. Th ...
by the end of the 60s.
The Beverley's label folded with the death of Leslie Kong in 1971.
See also
*
List of record labels
File:Alvinoreyguitarboogie.jpg
File:AmMusicBunk78.jpg
File:Bingola1011b.jpg
Lists of record labels cover record labels, brands or trademarks associated with marketing of music recordings and music videos. The lists are organized alphabetically, ...
References
{{Authority control
Reggae record labels
Jamaican record labels
Defunct record labels of Jamaica
Record labels established in 1961
Record labels disestablished in 1971