World of Jamaican Music

Discover artists and hear songs from everyone on the site! Log in to Spotify in this browser to hear full songs. SourcesYour Voice

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 →

Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace

Artist. Reggae

Active
1968-present
Sunrise
1949 or 1950
Also known as
Horsemouth

Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace is a drummer whose session work runs through the Studio One and roots eras, and who played the lead in Rockers, the 1978 film that did more than any other to put the working musicians of Kingston on screen.

He grew up in Rose Town, Kingston, and attended Alpha Boys School through the 1960s and into the early 1970s, studying under the bandmaster Lennie Hibbert. He began working sessions in the mid-1960s and played with the Soul Brothers, the Soul Vendors and the Sound Dimension, the successive house bands Coxsone Dodd used at Studio One, alongside Jackie Mittoo. He also recorded as a deejay under the name Mad Roy, in the first wave of that style with Dennis Alcapone, U-Roy and King Stitt, and cut "Herb Vendor" as Horsemouth in 1975.

His drumming appears on records by the Gladiators, Inner Circle, Prince Far I, Gregory Isaacs, Burning Spear, Ijahman Levi and Lee Perry, and on Augustus Pablo's production of Hugh Mundell's Africa Must Be Free by 1983. He played on Inner Circle's Reggae Thing in 1976 and wrote its closing track, "This World." He joined the reformed Skatalites in the mid-1970s. Dick Hebdige credited him with originating the rockers drum pattern; the same claim is more often made for Sly Dunbar, and the two accounts have never been reconciled. He traced his own playing to church ("I developed from my grandmother's Pocomania") and put the difference from Dunbar this way: "I am Pan African and he is Pan American."

Theodoros Bafaloukos cast him in Rockers as a version of himself, a drummer trying to make a living distributing records, opposite the saxophonist Richard "Dirty Harry" Hall. The scenes at his house were shot at his actual home with his own wife and children. The rest of the cast was largely made up of musicians appearing as themselves, among them Jacob Miller, Gregory Isaacs, Burning Spear, Big Youth, Dillinger, Robbie Shakespeare, Kiddus I, Leroy Smart, Jack Ruby, Joe Gibbs, Theophilus Beckford, Dr. Alimantado, Prince Hammer and Bongo Herman. He appeared at the One Love Peace Concert later that year as the island's new film star.

The film's fee let him work on his own account. He set up the Horsemouth label and returned to singing and deejaying with "Reggae Music," and went to Britain in the autumn of 1981, where he worked with Tapper Zukie, Errol Dunkley, Prince Far I and Junior Delgado. He has continued to record and tour, and is a regular in the Inna de Yard sessions at Earl "Chinna" Smith's yard in St. Andrew.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Wikipedia says Rockers "was originally intended to be a documentary" and features "authentic culture, characters and mannerisms." "Rockers (1978 Film)," Wikipedia, accessed October 2, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockers_(1978_film).
  2. The Rough Guide names Wallace and Leroy Smart as Alpha pupils "during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the vibraphonist Lennie Hibbert was bandmaster." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 8. Wallace told Taylor that Hibbert "was my first band master" but that he had left Alpha "by '64." Angus Taylor, "Interview: Horsemouth Wallace," United Reggae, October 14, 2014, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n1627/101414/interview-horsemouth-wallace.
  3. The Rough Guide calls him "Studio One drummer Leroy 'Horsemouth' Wallace." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 126. He told Taylor he came to Studio One "around 68-69" as a label printer and took over the drums when Fil Callender failed to turn up, and that Coxsone used "so much different names" for the band, among them Sound Dimension. Taylor, "Interview: Horsemouth Wallace."
  4. The Rough Guide: "calling himself Mad Roy for 'Universal Love', an accomplished enough deejay version of John Holt's 'A Love I Can Feel'." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 126. Taylor places him "alongside Dennis Alcapone, U-Roy and King Stitt" and dates "Herb Vendor," cut at the Black Ark, to 1975; Wallace said he played melodica and drums on it. Taylor, "Interview: Horsemouth Wallace."
  5. Discogs credits "This World" to Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace. "Inner Circle, Reggae Thing," Discogs, accessed October 2, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/1774000. The Rough Guide lists him as a drummer on records by I-Roy, Fred Locks, and Sugar Minott, and he told Taylor he played on "War Ina Babylon" at the Black Ark. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 193, 208, 275; Taylor, "Interview: Horsemouth Wallace." The other credits are from Wikipedia. "Leroy Wallace," Wikipedia, accessed October 2, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leroy_Wallace.
  6. Wikipedia, citing Dave Thompson's Reggae & Caribbean Music. "Leroy Wallace."
  7. Wikipedia, citing Dick Hebdige's Cut 'n' Mix (1987), p. 68. "Leroy Wallace." Taylor notes "some historical debate concerning whether it was he or Sly Dunbar who created the 'rockers' style," and Wallace told him that at Channel One "they put Sly Dunbar's name" on songs he played. Taylor, "Interview: Horsemouth Wallace."
  8. Angus Taylor, "Interview: Horsemouth Wallace," United Reggae, October 14, 2014, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n1627/101414/interview-horsemouth-wallace.
  9. Wikipedia summarizes the plot: Horsemouth, a drummer, buys a motorcycle on borrowed money to distribute reggae records. "Rockers (1978 Film)," Wikipedia, accessed October 2, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockers_(1978_film).
  10. Wikipedia lists Monica "Madgie" Craig, "Horsemouth's common-law wife in real life," and their children as themselves, and says he is shown "in his own home." "Rockers (1978 Film)."
  11. Wikipedia's cast list. "Rockers (1978 Film)."
  12. Wallace told Taylor he was at the concert, "had just finished doing the Rockers movie," and that the disc jockey Errol T introduced him as "a movie star in a big movie." Taylor, "Interview: Horsemouth Wallace."
  13. Taylor put it to him that he "never got paid to be in the movie," and Wallace answered, "I was young and stupid. I just wanted the excitement, wasn't thinking about money." Taylor, "Interview: Horsemouth Wallace."
  14. Wallace told Taylor that Prince Far I "was the first man that took me to England" in 1981, that he spent "almost five years in England back and forth," touring in 1983 with Sugar Minott, Junior Reid, and Don Carlos, and playing on records by Linton Kwesi Johnson, Dennis Bovell, and Castro Brown, and that he returned to Jamaica in 1985. Taylor, "Interview: Horsemouth Wallace."

World of Jamaican Music: the whole map