Lascelles Perkins
Artist. Ska
- Active
- 1950s-1960s
- Sunrise
- October 13, 1932, Trench Town, Kingston, Jamaica
- Also known as
- Lascelles & Hortense
Lascelles Perkins was a ballad singer who became Coxsone Dodd's premier balladeer at the very start of Jamaican record making, and remains, for the Rough Guide, one of the most under-recognized of the early singers.
Like many of his generation he came up through the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour talent shows, and Jamaican crooners of the late 1950s such as Perkins and Jackie Edwards were steeped in American ballad singers like Nat "King" Cole. He was present at Dodd's first commercially oriented session at Federal in 1959, with Alton & Eddy and Theophilus Beckford, and remembered the tension of one-take recording: the musicians were paid by the side, so "the more records they cut, the more money they got."
As the 1960s began he had massive local hits for Dodd with "Lonely Moments" and "Together Forever." His "Destiny," on Worldisc, was one of the records that followed "Oh Carolina" in using the nyahbingi drumming of Count Ossie. He also sang duets with Hortense Ellis, Alton Ellis's sister, as Lascelles & Hortense, and was a vocalist with Carlos Malcolm's band alongside Boris Gardiner. He cut an album of Studio One covers in 2015, and at ninety, in 2022, the musicologist Carl Finlay called him "the definition of a foundation artiste."
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Boris Gardiner (bandmate)
- Hortense Ellis (duo partner)
- Carlos Malcolm (bandleader)
- Coxsone Dodd (producer)
- Vere Johns (producer)
- Theophilus Beckford (worked with)
- Count Ossie (collaborator)
- Clue J (session work)
- Federal Records (studio)
Notes
- Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 20, 21.
- Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 21; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 18, 66, 70.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 20.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 21. The Gleaner calls Perkins perhaps the earliest of Jamaica's baritone crooners. "Vintage Voices: Baritone Crooners, Rare Gems in Reggae," Jamaica Gleaner, November 10, 2019, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20191110/vintage-voices-baritone-crooners-rare-gems-reggae.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 23.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 35, 46. Augustyn dates to 1961 the Worldisc release of "All By Ourselves (All By Myself)," "billed as Lascelles Perkins and Hortense Ellis." Heather Augustyn, "First Lady of Song: Hortense Ellis," SkaBook (blog), October 10, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/10/10/first-lady-song-hortense-ellis/.
- "Lascelles Perkins Marks Milestone," Jamaica Observer, October 22, 2022, https://jamaicaobserver.com/2022/10/22/lascelles-perkins-marks-milestone.
