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 →

Monty Morris

Artist. Ska, rocksteady, reggae

Active
1959-2010s
Sunrise
July 20, 1944, St. Andrew, Jamaica
Also known as
Monty, Eric Morris, Eric "Monty" Morris

Eric "Monty" Morris was one of the first ska singers. His "Humpty Dumpty," cut for Prince Buster in 1961, was the huge hit from the session on which Buster first built the afterbeat that became the characteristic rhythm of ska.

He grew up on Orange Lane in Kingston, a friend and neighbor of Derrick Morgan, and the two entered the Vere Johns Opportunity Hour together. After Morgan's first success Morris went into Federal with Trenton Spence's combo and cut "Now We Know" and "Nights Are Lonely" for Mr. Smith's Hi-Lite label. It was Morgan who told Buster about him, and Bradley hears in "Humpty Dumpty" a record that still swings rather than jumps, a step on the way from shuffle to ska. Morris was also at Leslie Kong's first session, with Jimmy Cliff and Morgan, in late 1961 or early 1962.

He called himself "an individual versatile artist," cutting soft tunes and mento-style songs alongside ska. For Duke Reid he made "Drop Your Sword" and "Penny Reel," a ska updating of an old mento song about a Kingston prostitute, and his "Money Can't Buy Life" was among the socially conscious ska records. "Sammy Dead," cut with Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, was chosen to lead the government's launch of ska at the Shepheard's Club in New York in April 1964, as the first ska record to be released in the United States, and when Prince Buster said it was not true ska, Morris answered him in the Gleaner. With "Sammy Dead" and "Oil in My Lamp" behind him he sang with Byron Lee and the Dragonaires at the 1964 New York World's Fair. In the rocksteady years he recorded "Put On Your Best Dress" for Sonia Pottinger, and in 1967 Clancy Eccles returned to production with Morris's "Say What You're Saying," which Morris considers the first reggae record.

Short of the money his hits had earned, he moved to the United States in 1970. He recorded again for the Washington label Kibwe in 1988 and returned to perform in Jamaica in 1999.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 4, 31.
  2. Angus Taylor, "Interview: Eric 'Monty' Morris," United Reggae, April 20, 2011, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n620/042011/interview-eric-monty-morris.
  3. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 21; Taylor, "Eric 'Monty' Morris."
  4. Derrick Morgan's account in Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 31; Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 94. Bradley dates the record to 1961.
  5. Jimmy Cliff's account in Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 105.
  6. Angus Taylor, "Interview: Eric 'Monty' Morris," United Reggae, April 20, 2011, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n620/042011/interview-eric-monty-morris.
  7. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 9, 40; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 95, 98.
  8. Morris, Ronnie Nasralla and others in "Statements on the Ska Impasse," Daily Gleaner, May 3, 1964, reprinted in Heather Augustyn, "Statements on the Ska Impasse," SkaBook (blog), January 24, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/01/24/statements-ska-impasse/. Nasralla writes that the New York promoters chose "Sammy Dead" as the lead-off record; Morris writes that Buster "only wanted to promote himself." The quarrel began with "Dissension in the Ska Camp," Sunday Gleaner, April 26, 1964, reprinted in Heather Augustyn, "Dissension in the Ska Camp," SkaBook (blog), January 17, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/01/17/dissension-ska-camp/.
  9. Taylor, "Eric 'Monty' Morris." Bradley lists Morris among the performers at the fair. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 134.
  10. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 171; Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 82, 83, 109; Taylor, "Eric 'Monty' Morris."
  11. Taylor, "Eric 'Monty' Morris."

World of Jamaican Music: the whole map