World of Jamaican Music

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An illustrated map of the creators of Jamaican music and how they are connected.

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The Blues Busters

Lloyd Campbell
Sunrise March 9, 1941, Montego Bay, St. James, Jamaica, Sunset 1992, New York
Philip James
Sunrise December 31, 1941, Montego Bay, St. James, Jamaica, Sunset 1989, New York

Band. Ska, rocksteady

Active
1960-1980s
Also known as
Blues Busters

The Blues Busters, Lloyd Campbell and Philip James, were the most consistently popular and vocally distinguished male duo of early Jamaican music; for the Rough Guide their refined harmonies, with those of Higgs & Wilson, set the benchmark.

They came from Montego Bay, and cut their first single, "Little Vilma," in 1960; it topped the local charts. Their "Donna" for Coxsone Dodd was one of the early Jamaican duo ballads. In 1961 they performed with Sam Cooke on his visit to the island, and he took them to New York, where they worked with Cooke and Joe Tex. Their style was mostly rhythm and blues and soul, with a touch of Latin and, to a lesser extent, ska, and either man could take the lead; one commentator called them "the duo that sounds like four, and having the personality of six." Mel Cooke's 2008 Gleaner review of a compilation of their hits quotes Jimmy Cliff ("They can really sing") and Bob Marley, who called them "always my favourite Jamaican group."

Managed by Ronnie Nasralla, they had their biggest hits with Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, among them "Behold," and were among the ska acts at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Capitol signed them in the United States, but, Bradley notes, their pre-ska R&B style made little impression on American listeners. Both men have since departed, and Montego Bay later presented them posthumously with the keys to the city.

Last updated November 4, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 22.
  2. "St. James Parish Council Honours Blues Busters," Jamaica Information Service, accessed October 6, 2026, https://jis.gov.jm/st-james-parish-council-honours-blues-busters/.
  3. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 21, 70.
  4. "Parish Council Honours Blues Busters."
  5. "The Music Lives for the Long Forgotten Singing Duo, the Blues Busters," reposted at clintonlindsay.com, accessed November 4, 2026, https://clintonlindsay.com/2016/07/31/the-music-lives-for-the-long-forgotten-singing-duo-the-blues-busters. This account dates Cooke's invitation to 1963, not 1961.
  6. Mel Cooke, "Review: Great Music in Substandard Package," Jamaica Gleaner, August 31, 2008, https://old.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080831/ent/ent2.html.
  7. "Parish Council Honours Blues Busters." Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 134. Nasralla told Augustyn that, encouraged by Edward Seaga, he took over the management of Byron Lee, the Blues Busters and the Maytals and "paid them twelve times more per record" than the downtown producers. Heather Augustyn, "Ronnie Nasralla Still Celebrating Ska!," SkaBook (blog), July 26, 2015, https://skabook.com/2015/07/26/ronnie-nasralla-still-celebrating-ska/.
  8. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 138.
  9. "Parish Council Honours Blues Busters."

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