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 walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off beat. It was developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Stranger Cole, Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm and blues and then began recording their own songs. In the early 1960s, ska was the dominant music genre of Jamaica and was popular with British mods and with many skinheads.
Barrington Ainsworth Levy is a Jamaican reggae and dancehall artist.
Cecil Bustamente Campbell, known professionally as Prince Buster, was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and producer. The records he released in the 1960s influenced and shaped the course of Jamaican contemporary music and created a legacy of work that would be drawn upon later by reggae and ska artists.
Mary Esther Wells was an American singer, who helped to define the emerging sound of Motown in the early 1960s.
Ernest Ranglin is a Jamaican guitarist and composer who established his career while working as a session guitarist and music director for various Jamaican record labels, including Studio One and Island Records. Ranglin played guitar on many early ska recordings and helped create the rhythmic guitar style that defined the form. He has worked with Theophilus Beckford, Jimmy Cliff, Monty Alexander, Prince Buster, the Skatalites, Bob Marley and the Eric Deans Orchestra. Ranglin is noted for a chordal and rhythmic approach that blends jazz, mento and reggae with percussive guitar solos incorporating rhythm 'n' blues and jazz inflections.
Christopher Percy Gordon Blackwell OJ 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 of Fame, to which Blackwell was inducted in 2001, he is "the single person most responsible for turning the world on to reggae music." Variety describes him as "indisputably one of the greatest record executives in history," while Barron's has described him as "a contender for most interesting man in the world."
The Cadillacs were an American rock and roll and doo-wop group from Harlem, New York, active from 1953 to 1962. The group was noted for their 1955 hit "Speedoo", written by Esther Navarro, which was instrumental in attracting white audiences to black rock and roll performers.
People from the Caribbean have made significant contributions to British Black music for many generations.
Claudja Barry is a Jamaican-born Canadian singer. Her successful songs were "Down and Counting", "Boogie Woogie Dancin' Shoes", "Dancing Fever", and others. As an actress, she is known for appearing in the European versions of stage musicals AC/DC and Catch My Soul.
Maggie Mae, stage name of Andrea Cosima Carle was a German singer.
Millicent Dolly May Small CD was a Jamaican singer who is best known for her international hit "My Boy Lollipop" (1964). The song reached number two in both the UK and US charts and sold over seven million copies worldwide. It was also the first major hit for Island Records and helped to achieve the label its mainstream success. She was the Caribbean's first international recording star and its most successful female performer.
Let's Dance is the third studio album by Australian pop singer, Nikki Webster, released on 21 June 2004 by BMG/Gotham Records. It is an album which found Webster working with a different style of music, a range of dance music was added. It peaked at number forty-six on the ARIA Albums Chart.
Wilfred Gerald Edwards, known as Jackie Edwards, was a Jamaican musician, songwriter and record producer, whose career took in ska, R&B, soul, rocksteady, reggae, and ballads.
Tracey Dey is an American former pop singer in the girl group genre of the early and mid-1960s.
Time Will Tell is a 1970 album by Jamaican singer Millie, reissued in 2004 on CD by Trojan Records with additional tracks.
"Tom Hark" is an instrumental South African kwela song from the 1950s, believed to have been composed by Jack Lerole. The song was arranged for penny whistle and first recorded by Elias and His Zig-Zag Jive Flutes – a South African band formed by pennywhistlers Jack and his brother Elias Lerole – and released in 1956. It was later released in the United Kingdom after it was used as a theme on a television series, and it reached number 2 on the UK Singles Chart in 1958.
My Boy Lollipop was the first album for Jamaican singer Millie Small and her only album for Smash Records. The title track has been credited by NME with sparking the popularity of reggae and ska, as well as opening doors for other genres of Jamaican music on the global stage.
The Migil Five were a British pop, rhythm and blues and (originally) jazz group in the early to mid-1960s, whose biggest hit was a bluebeat version of "Mockin' Bird Hill".
Put3ska was a Filipino ska band formed in 1993. The band's name is word play, combining the Filipino phrase, putres ka and "ska". The band referred to itself as a "60s-oriented, 90s ska band, influenced by Jamaican and British ska".
This Is Reggae Music: The Golden Era 1960–1975 is a reggae retrospective anthology issued as a 4-CD box set in 2004 by Trojan Records. The anthology, which was compiled by Colin Escott and Bas Hartong, is arranged in chronological order and features tracks by various artists, starting with mento and ska from the first half of the 1960s, then progressing to the slower rhythms of rocksteady and reggae, which both emerged later in the decade, continuing into the 1970s. Several of the acts featured are Derrick Morgan, Desmond Decker & the Aces, Toots & the Maytals, Jimmy Cliff, and Bob Marley and the Wailers.
