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 →

Charley Organaire

Artist. Ska, rocksteady

Active
1962-present
Sunrise
March 20, 1942, Kingston, Jamaica
Also known as
Charles Cameron, Charley "Organaire" Cameron

Charley Organaire is a harmonica player who, by his own estimate, played on more than three thousand record sides between 1962 and 1969, and whose afterbeat chords for Prince Buster helped set the sound of ska.

Born Charles Cameron in Kingston, he started on a plastic harmonica at about five, inspired by his mother, a singer, and by a neighbor who played; the nickname came from a neighbor too. As a teenager he took up the chromatic harmonica, which can play all twelve notes of the scale where the common diatonic model cannot, and he played with the big bands of Carlos Malcolm and Sonny Bradshaw. Heather Augustyn writes of his "colorful tone and dexterity throughout shifting tempos," and Chuck Wren calls him "the harmonica sound of ska music, as well as an important arranger." Of Tommy McCook and Roland Alphonso he said, "they were jazz guys, I learned so much from them." Buster had him, or the guitarist Jah Jerry, play a chord on the afterbeat, beginning with the session that produced Monty Morris's "Humpty Dumpty." He recorded for Buster, Studio One, Beverley's, Duke Reid and King Edwards, on sides by the Wailers, Jimmy Cliff, Derrick Morgan, Millie Small, Toots and the Maytals, Phyllis Dillon, Stranger Cole and Lord Creator. With Bobby Aitken he formed the Caribbeats, whose "Never Never" was a hit, and he ran his own Organaire label.

"The record producers weren't treating us right," he recalled. Frustrated by unpaid fees and the political violence of the 1970s, he moved to Chicago in 1976, worked as a painter for more than thirty years, and played Greek restaurants, Jamaican parties and Latin clubs as Charles Cameron. Rediscovered in 2012, he made new records for the Colibri label, played Jamaican oldies shows in Chicago, and toured Europe with the Prizefighters.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. "Finding Charley Organaire," South Side Weekly (Chicago), accessed October 21, 2026, https://southsideweekly.com/finding-charley-organaire/. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 4.
  2. Heather Augustyn, "Charley Organaire: Master of the Harmonica," SkaBook (blog), December 12, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/12/12/charley-organaire-master-harmonica/, quoting a Jump Up! Records biography for the birth date. "Finding Charley Organaire."
  3. Heather Augustyn, "Charley Organaire: Master Harmonica," SkaBook, December 12, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/12/12/charley-organaire-master-harmonica/.
  4. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 4.
  5. Augustyn, "Charley Organaire," quoting the Jump Up! biography and the Chicago Tribune.
  6. Augustyn, "Charley Organaire."
  7. Jack Nuelle, "Finding Charley Organaire," South Side Weekly, January 27, 2015, https://southsideweekly.com/finding-charley-organaire/.
  8. "Finding Charley Organaire." Augustyn, "Charley Organaire," quotes a Jump Up! biography dating the move to the late 1970s.

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