Duke Vin
Producer. Ska, rocksteady, reggae
- Active
- 1950s-2010
- Sunrise
- October 25, 1928, Kingston, Jamaica
- Sunset
- November 2012, London
- Also known as
- Duke Vin the Tickler, Vincent Forbes, Duke Vin the Tickler's
Duke Vin was the soundman who ran the first Jamaican sound system in Britain, Duke Vin the Tickler's, which he put together in Ladbroke Grove in 1955, soon after he arrived from Kingston.
In Jamaica he had been a selector for Tom the Great Sebastian, "a disc jockey that used to play records," as he put it, "not a deejay in the sense of someone who talks over tunes." He came to England as a stowaway on a banana boat, with his friend Wilbert Campbell, later Count Suckle. Because so many London venues would not let black men in, his sound played house parties, basements and shebeens. He had a black electrical engineer build him a two-hundred-watt amplifier with maximum bass, unheard of at the time, and soon the same man was building amplifiers for every sound in town.
He and Count Suckle, who set up soon after, were rivals, and in the late 1950s they were so in demand that they were always booked up, playing across London and on coach outings to Birmingham, Reading and the seaside. Vin won cups in 1956 and 1957, beating Boot and Suckle one night at a packed Lambeth Town Hall with American records such as Big Jay McNeely's "Big Jay Shuffle." When ska arrived he played for Emil Shallit at the Flamingo in Wardour Street every Thursday and at the Marquee; Don Drummond's "Eastern Standard Time" sent the Flamingo crowd wild. His most prized record, a Derrick Harriott production called "The Tickler," reached him in the post, and he played it on the night he met Coxsone Dodd at the Roaring Twenties. He played the Notting Hill Carnival for 37 years, despite a major stroke. "It is in me, it's in my blood," he said. He departed in London in November 2012.
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Tom the Great Sebastian (employer)
- Derrick Harriott (collaborator)
- Emil Shallit (collaborator)
- Count Suckle (rival)
Notes
- Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 115.
- Duke Vin's account in Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 12, 13; "Duke Vin: Sound System Pioneer," Jamaica Observer, November 16, 2012, https://jamaicaobserver.com/2012/11/15/duke-vin-sound-system-pioneer. Katz says Vincent Forbes, Wilbert Campbell (later Count Suckle) and Lenny Fry "stowed away on a banana boat bound for Britain in 1952," and that "by 1955 Forbes had established Britain's first sound system." David Katz, "Count Suckle Obituary," Guardian, June 4, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jun/04/count-suckle. Vin's own account and Bradley give 1954, so the bio gives no year for the voyage.
- Jah Vego's account in Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 115, 116, 117, 118.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 115, 116.
- Duke Vin's account in Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 12, 13.
- Duke Vin's account in Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 12, 13. The Rough Guide notes that "The Tickler" was produced by Derrick Harriott. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 13.
- "Duke Vin: Sound System Pioneer." The Observer calls him a founder of the carnival in 1973; Wikipedia gives his dates as October 25, 1928, to November 3, 2012. "Duke Vin," Wikipedia, accessed October 6, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Vin.
