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 →

Norma Fraser

Artist. Ska, rocksteady, reggae

Active
1963-present
Sunrise
Kingston, Jamaica
Also known as
Norma Frazer

Norma Fraser is a singer who recorded for Coxsone Dodd at Studio One from the ska years on, best known for her version of "The First Cut Is the Deepest" and for duets with Lord Creator and Ken Boothe.

She grew up in the suburbs of Kingston and was working as a schoolteacher when the guitarist Dwight Pinkney encouraged her to sing; Roland Alphonso picked her out of a group, and Dodd oversaw her sessions. With Lord Creator she had a hit duet, "We Will Be Lovers," and in 1963 she wrote "Come On Pretty Baby" for the B-side of one of his records. On Ken Boothe's Studio One album Mr. Rock Steady she sings with him on "Give Me the Right," and she was one of the voices, with Rita Marley and Constantine "Dream" Walker, on Peter Tosh's "Rasta Shook Them Up," cut at Studio One without Bob Marley to celebrate Haile Selassie's visit to Kingston. Her Studio One sides sit beside Leroy Sibbles's and Alton Ellis's on the label's soul-leaning compilations, and her version of Cat Stevens's "The First Cut Is the Deepest" is the record most listeners know.

She left music in the 1970s to take a master's degree and worked in gerontology and psychotherapy, turning down an invitation to join the I-Threes along the way. After twenty years away she returned to the stage; she settled in Eugene, Oregon, in 2005 and still performs a few times a year, choosing, she says, to "just do things that are uplifting."

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Robert Ham, "The Pacific Northwest Has Become a Home Base for Illustrious Reggae Artists like Norma Fraser," Willamette Week, April 15, 2025, https://www.wweek.com/music/2025/04/15/the-pacific-northwest-has-become-a-home-base-for-illustrious-reggae-artists-like-norma-fraser/. Mel Cooke names her among the singers who recorded "First Cut Is the Deepest." Mel Cooke, "Story of the Song: First Cut at Reggae for Myrna Hague," Jamaica Gleaner, May 26, 2017, https://past.jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20170528/story-song-first-cut-reggae-myrna-hague.
  2. Ham, "Pacific Northwest," quoting her on Alphonso: "He picked me out of the group."
  3. Ham, "Pacific Northwest." The Rough Guide lists "(Lord) Creator & Norma (Fraser)" among the ska era's boy-girl duos. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 35.
  4. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 72, which calls the Boothe duet "delicious," and 79.
  5. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 75.
  6. Ham, "Pacific Northwest," quoting her on the I-Threes: "I turned it down."

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