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 →

Chris Blackwell

Producer. Ska, rocksteady, reggae

Active
1958-present
Sunrise
June 22, 1937, London, England

Chris Blackwell founded Island Records and did more than anyone outside Jamaica to determine how the rest of the world heard Jamaican music. Whether that was mainly a service or mainly an appropriation has been argued for fifty years, and both readings have evidence.

He was born in London into a wealthy Anglo-Jamaican family with old colonial roots on the island, and raised in Jamaica. He started his first label, R&B, in 1958 with Laurel Aitken's "Boogie in My Bones," founded Island in 1959, and in 1962 moved to London to license Jamaican records for the West Indian population in Britain. Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop," which he produced in 1964 and licensed to Fontana, sold in the millions and was the first Jamaican record to reach a mass international audience.

Through the 1960s he built Island into a substantial independent label, signing Traffic, Free, and Fairport Convention while largely stepping back from Jamaican music. The decision that mattered came in 1972, when he signed the Wailers and marketed them as an album act for the rock audience rather than a singles act for the reggae audience. He financed Catch a Fire, remixed it in London with rock guitar and keyboard overdubs, and packaged it in a sleeve shaped like a Zippo lighter. By his own account he gave the group £4,000 and asked them to sign nothing, took the tapes to Basing Street, had the American guitarist Wayne Perkins play with the bass turned down because he could not follow it, and told the label, "Don't think of it as a reggae record. It's a rock record." The record set out to establish reggae internationally on terms no Jamaican producer had attempted. He also owned the house at 56 Hope Road, which Marley took over around 1974 and the Wailers used until his sunset, and he later told the High Court that he had gone along with Marley's crediting of his songs to friends, believing that Danny Sims was not paying Marley his royalties.

The objection is that he altered the music to make it legible to white listeners, and the mixes he applied to Catch a Fire and to Burning Spear's Marcus Garvey were resented by the musicians, though Marley went along with the changes to Catch a Fire. The counterargument is that the records reached audiences that would otherwise never have heard them, and that Island released a great deal of uncompromised material as well, from Toots and the Maytals, Jimmy Cliff, Burning Spear, Third World, and Black Uhuru.

He signed Grace Jones in 1977 and later U2, sold Island to PolyGram in 1989, and turned to hospitality in Jamaica, including the conversion of Ian Fleming's house at GoldenEye into a hotel. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Bradley quotes Jimmy Cliff crediting Blackwell with opening up "the selling of records in Jamaica" and with paying artists and musicians "higher rates," and records Peter Tosh's name for him, "Chris Whiteworst"; he adds that Island UK and Jamaican reggae artists "were never the easiest of bedfellows." Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 82, 103-4, 454.
  2. Bradley calls him "a white, planter-class-wealthy, Jamaican-born Old Harrovian," and the Rough Guide notes his Harrow education. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 42; Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 19. Wikipedia, citing Colin Larkin's Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, gives his birthplace as Westminster, London, and says he spent his childhood in Jamaica. "Chris Blackwell," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Blackwell.
  3. The Rough Guide says he started R&B in 1958, scoring with "Boogie In My Bones," a record made with "mostly white Canadian musicians"; Bradley also names Aitken as R&B's first Jamaican signing. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 20; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 42-43. Bradley dates his move to London to 1962, with Island's first UK release, Lord Kitchener's "Independant Jamaica Calypso," that July. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 103, 130. Wikipedia dates Island's founding in Jamaica to 1959 and names a Lance Hayward album as its debut release. "Chris Blackwell," Wikipedia.
  4. Bradley says the record "sold over 6 million world-wide," reached number 2 in the UK, was "Top 5 in the USA," and was "the first by a Jamaican" to be a worldwide hit, but that it was made in London with largely English-based players and arranged by Ernest Ranglin, and that Blackwell licensed it to Fontana because it needed more support than Island could give. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 151-52. The Rough Guide likewise has it selling "millions." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 26.
  5. Bradley says that after splitting operationally from Lee Gopthal in 1968 Blackwell concentrated on rock, keeping only a financial interest in the B&C reggae labels, and describes Island as "virtually getting out of reggae" in those years; the Rough Guide says he "had returned to the Jamaican music" after concentrating on Traffic, Jethro Tull, and Free. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 239, 413; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 137.
  6. The Rough Guide dates the signing to 1972; Bradley says the plan was to treat the album "in exactly the same way as it would a mainstream rock release." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 136; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 413. The High Court found that Blackwell first met the Wailers in London in 1971 and agreed to finance their first album, and that Marley, Tosh and Livingston signed with Island on August 25, 1972: Barrett v. Universal-Island Records Ltd. and Others, [2006] EWHC 1009 (Ch), May 15, 2006, https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/ch/2006/1009, paras. 19, 21.
  7. The Rough Guide names the London overdubs of "Rabbit" Bundrick (organ), Wayne Perkins (guitar), and Chris Karen (tabla); Bradley lists "clavinet, guitar and percussion overdubs by rock musicians" and a "quickened tempo." Both describe the Zippo sleeve. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 137; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 414.
  8. "Chris Blackwell Remembers Making Bob Marley's 'Catch a Fire,'" excerpt from Chris Blackwell with Paul Morley, The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond (New York: Gallery Books, 2022), Rolling Stone, accessed November 5, 2026, https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/chris-blackwell-remembers-making-bob-marleys-catch-a-fire-1358985/.
  9. The Rough Guide calls it "the first reggae album made with a rock audience specifically in mind." Bradley argues that its standing is largely "with hindsight": it "sold poorly," black British reggae audiences "ignored it completely," and the less adulterated Burnin' did better. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 137; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 414-15.
  10. Barrett v. Universal-Island Records, paras. 19, 284. Stephen Davis, in Steffens's oral history, says the house was sold to Blackwell by a Mrs. Gough and that Marley "sort of took it over around 1974": Roger Steffens, "The Night Bob Marley Got Shot," Rolling Stone (Australia), July 10, 2017, https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-night-bob-marley-got-shot-1877, an excerpt from Roger Steffens, So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017).
  11. Bradley writes that "Bob willingly went along with what was done to his work," while Aston Barrett recalls the band laughing at the UK-finished album. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 414-15. The Rough Guide refers to "the remixed form" of Island's UK release of Marcus Garvey, and Wikipedia says Island altered the speed of some tracks, "much to the annoyance of fans and the group." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 147; "Burning Spear," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Spear.
  12. Bradley lists Burning Spear, Lee Perry, Max Romeo, Jimmy Cliff, and Toots and the Maytals among Island's UK reggae releases; the Rough Guide adds Third World and Black Uhuru and Island's production deals with Perry, Jack Ruby, and Harry J. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 454; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 145, 148, 150.
  13. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame names Bob Marley, Grace Jones, and U2 among his signings. "Chris Blackwell," Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, accessed October 1, 2026, https://rockhall.com/inductees/chris-blackwell/. Wikipedia dates Jones's Island deal to 1977. "Grace Jones," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Jones.
  14. Wikipedia says he sold Island in 1989 and later formed Island Outpost, which runs GoldenEye, Fleming's former home in Oracabessa, as a resort. "Chris Blackwell," Wikipedia. "Goldeneye (estate)," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldeneye_(estate).
  15. He was inducted in 2001, by Bono. "Chris Blackwell," Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

World of Jamaican Music: the whole map