World of Jamaican Music

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An illustrated map of the creators of Jamaican music and how they are connected.

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Leroy Smart

Artist. Reggae

Active
1973-present
Sunrise
October 30, 1952, Kingston, Jamaica
Also known as
Mr. Smart

Leroy Smart, known as the Don, is a singer whose records for Bunny Lee, Gussie Clarke and the Hoo Kim brothers put a hard, pleading vocal style at the center of the roots era. Tim Cooper writes of an "anguished voice, permanently on the brink of breaking down, and his unusual enunciation."

He was orphaned at two, raised at the Maxfield Park Children's Home, and educated at Alpha Boys School, where he studied singing, drumming and dancing. His first record, "It Pains Me," was cut in 1969 for a producer billed as Mr. Caribbean. "Ethiopia" followed for Joe Gibbs in 1970, and the first version of "Pride and Ambition," the song he is most identified with, was made with Gussie Clarke and issued on Tuff Gong. In 1972 he cut "God Helps the Man" for Bunny Lee's Jackpot label, which Lee remembered as the first thing the two of them did together.

His breakthrough was "Mother Liza," produced by Jimmy Radway in 1973, which topped the Jamaican chart and pulled "Pride and Ambition" up behind it. Big Youth used the "Pride and Ambition" riddim on "Screaming Target." Through the middle of the decade he worked at Channel One on Maxfield Avenue, cutting "Black Man," "Jah Jah," "Meaning of Life" and "Badness Don't Pay," and the Well Charge single "Ballistic Affair," which is the record he is best known for: an appeal against the gunfighting between Jungle and Rema.

He appeared as himself in Rockers in 1978, alongside a cast drawn almost entirely from the working musicians of Kingston. He has continued to record and perform, and his catalog has been reissued steadily since.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. The Rough Guide notes "the gravel-voiced Leroy Smart's biting 'Wreck Up My Life'" for Bunny Lee and his "gritty vocal attack." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 153, 274. Bradley lists him among Gussie Clarke's artists. Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 305.
  2. Tim Cooper, review of Leroy Smart, Eats, Drinks and Leaves, accessed November 5, 2026, https://www.eatsdrinksandleaves.com/?p=4061.
  3. Wikipedia, citing Colin Larkin and CD liner notes. "Leroy Smart," Wikipedia, accessed October 2, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leroy_Smart. The Rough Guide names him among the Alpha pupils of "the late 1960s and early 1970s." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 8.
  4. Wikipedia, citing a 2006 interview in CD liner notes, gives "It Pains Me" (1969), "Ethiopia" for Gibbs (1970), and the first "Pride & Ambition" with Gussie Clarke. "Leroy Smart." The Rough Guide calls "Pride & Ambition" "the most outstanding song he ever wrote," "originally recorded for the Wailers' Tuff Gong label." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 156.
  5. Wikipedia dates "God Helps the Man" for Bunny Lee's Jackpot label to 1972. "Leroy Smart." The Rough Guide's recommended collection is of "the singer's strongest records for Striker." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 156.
  6. Wikipedia, citing CD liner notes. "Leroy Smart." The Rough Guide notes that Radway had hits with Smart. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 235.
  7. The Rough Guide lists "Pride & Ambition" among the rhythms on Big Youth's album Screaming Target, produced by Gussie Clarke. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 126. On the album the rhythm carries "Pride & Joy Rock"; the title track uses K.C. White's "No, No, No." "Screaming Target," Wikipedia, accessed October 2, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_Target.
  8. The Rough Guide places "Ballistic Affair" among his records for the Hoo Kims' labels (Well Charge among them), notes that it was "written by Greenwich Farm-based singer Frankie Jones" over an updated "College Rock" rhythm, and quotes "Now thru' you rest a Jungle, Or you might block a Rema." It adds that Smart "himself carried something of a bad-boy reputation." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 156, 157. The Rough Guide's chronology lists the song among the 1976 hits about the "tribal war." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 454. Bradley counts it among Channel One's "solo protest classics." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 357, 464.
  9. Wikipedia. "Leroy Smart."

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