Emil Shallit
Producer. Ska
- Active
- 1946-1960s
- Sunset
- 1982 or 1983, England
- Also known as
- Melodisc, Blue Beat
Emil Shallit owned Melodisc, the London independent that was the first British company to commit to Jamaican music, and its subsidiary Blue Beat, whose name became a British word for ska.
A big, larger-than-life man of uncertain Central European background, he founded Melodisc in 1946 and released jazz, blues, R&B, African highlife and calypso, understanding that Britain's black record buyers were several distinct markets. In the early 1950s Melodisc arranged the London pressing of Stanley Motta's first mento records. After a London-recorded Laurel Aitken record sold well, Shallit and his lieutenant Siggy Jackson launched Blue Beat in 1960, Jackson naming it "because it had a good beat and was bluesy"; it issued more than two dozen singles that year and over three hundred in the next five.
Shallit traveled to Kingston regularly, dealing with Coxsone Dodd, Duke Reid, Edward Seaga, Derrick Harriott, Ken Khouri and others, and by Bradley's account he paid fairly and on time. When Prince Buster found one of his exclusive tunes, sold to Shallit by an impostor, on sale in London, Shallit apologized and signed him to release exclusively on Blue Beat; from 1960 to 1967 his labels issued hundreds of Buster's productions. Blue Beat club nights at the Marquee and a line of Blue Beat clothing aimed at the mods followed. He departed in 1982 or 1983.
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Laurel Aitken (artist)
- Coxsone Dodd (collaborator)
- Duke Reid (collaborator)
- Prince Buster (collaborator)
- Derrick Harriott (collaborator)
- Byron Lee (collaborator)
- Stanley Motta (collaborator)
- Duke Vin (collaborator)
- Chris Blackwell (rival)
Notes
- Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 126.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 126.
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 7, 8.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 127. Owen Adams, "Label of Love: Blue Beat Records," Guardian, via inkl, accessed November 5, 2026, https://www.inkl.com/news/label-of-love-blue-beat-records, which dates Melodisc to 1947 and gives Shallit's death as 1983, at seventy-one.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 127, 128; Prince Buster's account in Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 128; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 26, 31.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 131, 149. Duke Vin played for Shallit at the Flamingo every Thursday and at the Marquee. Duke Vin's account in Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 13.
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 126, which gives 1982, "in his late seventies." Wikipedia, citing the death index, gives April 23, 1983, Slough, at 73. "Melodisc Records," Wikipedia, accessed October 8, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melodisc_Records.
