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 →

Larry Marshall

Artist. Rocksteady, reggae

Active
1960s-2000s
Sunrise
1941 or 1945, St. Ann
Sunset
August 24, 2017, Miami, Florida
Also known as
Fitzroy Marshall, Larry & Alvin, Larry and Alvin

Larry Marshall, from St. Ann, was a singer and songwriter whose "Nanny Goat," with Alvin Leslie, is one of the records most often named as the first reggae record, and who did as much behind the desk at Studio One as in front of the microphone.

He came to Kingston in 1957 and made his first records for the Chinese-Jamaican producer Philip "Justin" Yap, among them "Too Young to Love" and "Promise Is a Comfort to a Fool," working with the Skatalites. At Coxsone Dodd's Brentford Road studio he and Alvin Leslie, as Larry and Alvin, cut "Nanny Goat" in 1968; Marshall said he was paid £29 for it, that Dodd did not like it, and that he promoted it on the sound systems himself. It and the Beltones' "No More Heartaches" are the records most often credited with the switch from rocksteady to reggae: Dodd pointed to the delay echo he had put on the guitar, and Bradley notes that "Nanny Goat" shows off the bubbling "shuffle organ" of the new style more prominently. "Throw Me Corn," "Thelma," "Mean Girl" and "Can't You Understand" followed, and Dodd released one album, Presenting Larry Marshall.

He also worked as an assistant to Studio One's engineer Sylvan Morris, searched out dubs for sound-system use, and wrote and arranged for other singers. By his own account he taped Dennis Brown, Alton Ellis, Horace Andy and Freddy McKay, and helped the young Burning Spear find his way to Studio One and shape his sound. The Rough Guide compares his role there to Hopeton Lewis's at Treasure Isle.

After leaving Dodd he made "I Admire You" (1974) for Carlton Patterson's Black & White label, recorded at Randy's, with a King Tubby mix, "Watergate Rock," on the flip side; the Rough Guide counts the album of the same name his best work away from Brentford Road. He moved to South Florida after marrying in 1991 and departed at his home in Miami; the cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease, which he had lived with for ten years.

Last updated October 21, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. The Rough Guide calls him "one of Jamaica's most talented singers and songwriters" and gives "b. Lawrence Park, 1945, St Ann's." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 94. Discogs gives his name as Fitzroy Marshall, born December 17, 1941. "Larry Marshall," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/artist/201531-Larry-Marshall. The Caribbean National Weekly gave his age at death as seventy-six. "Reggae Pioneer Larry Marshall Dead at 76," Caribbean National Weekly, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.caribbeannationalweekly.com/posts/reggae-pioneer-larry-marshall-dead-76.
  2. His own account in Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 94. Katz says the "early sessions" that Philip "Justin" Yap and his brother Duke held at Federal from 1962 "yielded Larry Marshall's debut Too Young To Love," and that Yap first recorded the Skatalites in 1964. David Katz, "Philip Yap," Guardian, August 5, 1999, https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/aug/05/guardianobituaries2.
  3. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 94, 95 (his account). Discogs dates the Studio One single to 1968. "Larry and Alvin: Nanny Goat / Smell You Crep," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/1526088-Larry-And-Alvin-Nanny-Goat-Smell-You-Crep.
  4. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 200-201. Bradley concludes that "Johnson's record is, in fact, the primary example." The Rough Guide calls the question "debatable" and points to Lynford Anderson's "Pop a Top" as earlier still. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 87.
  5. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 91, 94.
  6. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 91.
  7. His own account in Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 95.
  8. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 98.
  9. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 95. The single is dated 1974 on Discogs. "Larry Marshall / King Tubby's: I Admire You / Watergate Rock," Discogs, accessed October 6, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/2393130-Larry-Marshall-King-Tubbys-I-Admire-You-Watergate-Rock.
  10. "Reggae Pioneer Larry Marshall Dead at 76."

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