World of Jamaican Music

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

Remembering Derrick Harriott (1939-2026), rocksteady singer and producer. Read his story →

Boris Gardiner

Artist. Ska, rocksteady, reggae, roots

Active
1961-present
Sunrise
January 13, 1943, Rollington Town, Kingston, Jamaica
Also known as
Boris Gardner, Boris Gardiner Happening, The Rhythm Aces

Boris Gardiner is a bassist, arranger, bandleader and baritone singer who played on sessions from Studio One to the Black Ark and reached number one in Britain more than twenty years after his first hit.

Like many of his generation he came through the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour. In 1961 he sang lead with Richard Ace's Rhythm Aces on "A Thousand Teardrops," recorded by Chris Blackwell, and then joined Kes Chin and the Souvenirs and Carlos Malcolm's Afro-Jamaican Rhythms, where he sang alongside Lascelles Perkins. When Malcolm's bass player left for Canada around 1965, Malcolm handed Gardiner the bass, and he taught himself one tune at a time.

Back in Kingston he led a band at the Bronco club and spent some three months as Studio One's bassist under Jackie Mittoo, playing on "Nanny Goat" and the Heptones' "On Top," and he arranged Derrick Harriott's session for "The Loser." In 1969 he made "Elizabethan Reggae," with Winston Wright's ornate organ, which reached the British Top 20 the following year; Derrick Harriott told Bradley that this "plush" reggae was the kind uptown Jamaica accepted once England liked it.

His Boris Gardiner Happening, a hotel-circuit band, launched Tinga Stewart and Earl Sixteen, though Bradley reports that Gardiner sacked Sixteen over stray dreadlocks showing under his hat. In the 1970s he was usually the Upsetters' bass player at Lee Perry's Black Ark, where Perry would hire him to build riddims for a week at a time. He played bass on Junior Murvin's "Police and Thieves" (1976), and Byron Lee counted him among Dynamic Sounds' in-house producers. In 1986 "I Want to Wake Up with You" was a British number one.

His two careers ran side by side. One survey of reggae's greatest bassists hears in his playing "a bouncy quality that works within multiple genres." As a singer he has been called effortless and smooth-voiced, with an enunciation that recalls Nat King Cole and Johnny Ace; he started as a tenor and, in his own words, "got pretty baritonish."

Last updated November 4, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Angus Taylor, "Interview: Boris Gardiner in Kingston (Part 1)," United Reggae, December 18, 2017, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n2320/121817/interview-boris-gardiner-in-kingston-part-1.
  2. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 21.
  3. Taylor, "Boris Gardiner in Kingston (Part 1)." The Rough Guide lists him as a vocalist in Carlos Malcolm's band. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 46.
  4. Taylor, "Boris Gardiner in Kingston (Part 1)."
  5. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 202, 242; Harriott's account in Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 248.
  6. Taylor, "Boris Gardiner in Kingston (Part 1)." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 289. Earl Sixteen's own account of the band does not mention a sacking. Angus Taylor, "Interview: Earl 16 (2014, Part 1)," United Reggae, August 15, 2014, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n1579/081514/interview-earl-16-2014-part-1.
  7. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 176; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 326; Earl Sixteen's account in Taylor, "Earl 16 (Part 1)."
  8. Katz says Perry recorded it in May 1976 "with the drummer Sly Dunbar, the bassist Boris Gardiner and the guitarist Ernest Ranglin." David Katz, "Junior Murvin Obituary," Guardian, December 3, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/dec/03/junior-murvin. Lee names Gardiner among Dynamic's four in-house producers, with Lee Perry, Bunny Lee and Tommy Cowan. David Katz, "Byron Lee: The Original Dragonaire," Red Bull Music Academy Daily, March 25, 2013, https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/03/byron-lee-feature.
  9. "Vintage Voices: Baritone Crooners, Rare Gems in Reggae," Jamaica Gleaner, November 10, 2019, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20191110/vintage-voices-baritone-crooners-rare-gems-reggae.
  10. "Toppa Top 10: Reggae's Greatest Bassists," LargeUp, June 11, 2014, https://www.largeup.com/2014/06/11/toppa-top-10-reggaes-ten-greatest-bassists/7/.
  11. "Boris Gardiner: The Man Behind the Music," Clinton Lindsay, accessed November 4, 2026, https://clintonlindsay.com/2014/03/09/boris-gardiner-the-man-behind-the-music.

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