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 →

Prince Buster

Producer. Ska, rocksteady

Active
1960-2016
Sunrise
May 24, 1938, Kingston, Jamaica
Sunset
September 8, 2016, Miami, Florida

Cecil Bustamente Campbell, who performed and produced as Prince Buster, was the first Jamaican record man to be a star in his own right rather than a name on other people's labels, and the figure through whom the British ska revival of the late 1970s reached back to the music of the early 1960s.

He was born on Orange Street in Kingston and given his middle name for Alexander Bustamante, the labor leader and first prime minister. Sent to his grandmother in the country in the early 1940s, he got his first singing from church and family prayer meetings, and on returning to Orange Street attended the Central Branch and St. Anne's schools. Buster is a shortening of Bustamante; Prince came from his amateur boxing. Coxsone Dodd hired him to protect the Downbeat sound system, and around 1959 he left to run his own, Voice of the People, with a label and a record shop at 36 Charles Street.

Voice of the People was built on a loan from his mother and equipment bought on credit, and Downbeat's deejay, Count Machuki, came over to it at once. Its first dance was played down Salt Lane, by the Rasta camps where Count Ossie lived, and it was soon ranked with Downbeat and Duke Reid's Trojan as one of the three big sounds of West Kingston: Downbeat had the better equipment, but Buster's was the people's sound. Refused a farm-work visa that would have let him buy records in the United States, he made his own for it, and the first sides he cut at Federal, "Little Honey" and "Humpty Dumpty" among them, were hits on Voice of the People before they were hits in the shops. By his own later account, that new beat was ska: he had Drumbago play the rhythm of a marching drum, with Jah Jerry strumming against it and a horn keeping the same time.

After those first sessions came "Oh Carolina" (1960), sung by the Folkes Brothers over Nyabinghi drumming by Count Ossie's players from the Wareika Hill camp, which put Rastafarian percussion on a commercial record for the first time. It was licensed to Emil Shallit's Melodisc in London and issued on the subsidiary Blue Beat, which became the label British listeners identified with Jamaican music through the decade. Buster's own labels were Voice of the People, Wild Bells, and later Islam, with Fab as his British outlet.

He was at the center of the two long quarrels of the period. The first was with Dodd, conducted through sound clashes and answer records, including the Studio One sides Delroy Wilson cut as attacks on him while still a boy. The second was with Derrick Morgan, which began when Morgan went to work for Leslie Kong: Buster's "Blackhead Chiney Man" and Morgan's "Blazing Fire" are the first answer records in Jamaican music, and the exchange set a pattern the deejays would still be following in the 1970s.

His own records ran to several hundred. "Madness" (1963), "Wash Wash" (1963, with Ernest Ranglin on bass), "One Step Beyond" (1964), "Al Capone" (1964), "Judge Dread" (1967), "Ten Commandments" (1967), "Shaking Up Orange Street," and "Big Five" (1972) are the ones most often named. "Al Capone" is not an instrumental: it opens with the sound of skidding tires and a spoken line, and the talkover manner of it and of the Judge Dread courtroom records is a direct precursor of what U-Roy and the deejays would do with a microphone over a riddim. It reached number eighteen in Britain in 1967 and stayed thirteen weeks, the first Jamaican-produced record in the British top twenty. He recorded others besides himself, among them the Folkes Brothers, Eric Morris, Derrick Morgan, Errol Dunkley, whose "My Queen" he cut when Dunkley was twelve, and Gregory Isaacs on "Dancing Floor," and he covered the Ethiopians' "Everything Crash."

He was part of the Jamaican delegation to the New York World's Fair in 1964, alongside Millie Small, Jimmy Cliff, and Byron Lee, and appears in This Is Ska!, the film Edward Seaga hosted at the Sombrero Club that year, performing "Wash Wash." On the same trip he took Jimmy Cliff to meet Muhammad Ali in Harlem; he joined the Nation of Islam and took the name Yusef Muhammad Ali, though he went on recording as Prince Buster. That October he had his only professional fight, at the National Stadium in a robe lettered "Prince Mohammed the Great": his opponent went down in the first round, as Buster had predicted in verse, and the boxing board held back both purses while it looked into the bout.

The 2 Tone bands worked from his catalog more than from anyone else's. Madness took their name from his song, and their first single, "The Prince" (1979), released on 2 Tone, was a tribute to him; "One Step Beyond" became their signature. A Levi's advertisement in 1998 put "Whine and Grine" back on the British chart thirty years after it was made. He toured regularly in Britain from the 1960s onward and was known there for pursuing his own records through the second-hand trade, having lost control of much of the catalog to licensing.

He was given the Order of Distinction in 2001. He departed in Miami on September 8, 2016, at seventy-eight, and was survived by his wife Mola Ali and nineteen children.

Last updated October 23, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. The Rough Guide says that by the end of ska he "had come to personify the 'one-man record company'." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 32. See also Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 27.
  2. These details of his childhood are reported in "Prince Buster," Wikipedia, accessed October 5, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Buster. The Rough Guide gives his name as Cecil Bustamente Campbell. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 16. The Gleaner's obituary gives Cecil Eustace Campbell. "Legendary Ska Singer Prince Buster Is Dead," Jamaica Gleaner, September 8, 2016, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20160908/legendary-ska-singer-prince-buster-dead.
  3. Bradley calls him "a handy amateur boxer," taught by Speedy Baker and Kid Chocolate. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 31; see also Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 16. Augustyn writes that "Prince" was the nickname he received while boxing, though Buster told her in a 1997 interview, "I was called that [Prince Buster] from day one." Heather Augustyn, "Prince Buster the Boxer," SkaBook (blog), November 22, 2013, https://skabook.com/2013/11/22/prince-buster/; Heather Augustyn, "Prince Buster Interview," SkaBook (blog), December 18, 2015, https://skabook.com/2015/12/18/prince-buster-interview/.
  4. On how he came to work for Dodd, as protection against Duke Reid's men, Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 31-32. The Rough Guide: "By 1959 he had set up properly on his own, starting the Voice Of the People sound system, label and record shop at 36 Charles Street, premises that had been the site of the Prince Buster Record Shack outlet since 1957." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 16. Bradley says he left Coxsone in 1959. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 56.
  5. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 33. Wikipedia adds a loan from a radio-shop owner, Mr. Wong. "Prince Buster," Wikipedia.
  6. Bradley quotes Buster on the first dance "down Salt Lane in Dungle, where Count Ossie and the Rasta camps were," and writes that "at some time during 1958, the Big Two became the Big Three," with Voice of the People "genuinely, the people's choice." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 33.
  7. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 57-58, quoting Buster: "After those tunes were big hits on my sound system, they used to talk about how people were following 'Buster's little boop boop beat'."
  8. Buster to Bradley: "although I didn't know it then, this was ska. The belly of the ska sound is that marching drum." He names the saxophonist as Ribs. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 58. He told Augustyn the same story in 1997, naming Rico Rodriguez as the horn player and saying he asked Drumbago "to put the accent on the one and the three." Augustyn, "Prince Buster Interview." Augustyn treats his claims to have been the first to play and to name ska as part of his gift for self-promotion. Heather Augustyn, "Prince Buster Takes on the Beatles?!," SkaBook (blog), February 28, 2014, https://skabook.com/2014/02/28/prince-buster-takes-beatles/.
  9. The Rough Guide calls it "the first Jamaican 45 to feature the nyahbingi drumming of Count Ossie." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 23. Bradley: "For the first time in the nation's history one of the few surviving African-based artforms... had become involved with a commercially viable mainstream expression." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 59-61. Bradley places the record early in 1960 on p. 51 but calls 1958 "the year before 'Oh Carolina'" on p. 63; Wikipedia gives 1961. "Prince Buster," Wikipedia.
  10. Bradley spells the owner's name Shallit and dates Blue Beat's launch to August 1960. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 126-28. The Rough Guide says Blue Beat issued "around six hundred Prince Buster productions" between 1962 and 1967. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 31.
  11. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 18, which lists Prince Buster Voice of the People, Buster Wild Bells, Buster Wild Flowers, Buster's Record Shack and Olive Blossom, then Islam and Soulsville Centre in the 1960s; on Fab, Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 32.
  12. The Rough Guide notes "several barbed attacks on Buster" among Delroy Wilson's first Coxsone hits, and quotes Wilson: "I was the missile that could get rid of Prince Buster." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 36.
  13. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 34: "Buster launched the first attack with 'Blackhead Chinaman'.... Derrick came back immediately with 'Blazing Fire'." See also Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 105. Neither book calls these the first answer records in Jamaican music.
  14. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 31.
  15. The Rough Guide says "Wash Wash" was cut in Britain on his first tour, in 1963, "with Georgie Fame and saxophonist Red Price." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 31; see also Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 129. Ernest Ranglin on bass is reported in "Prince Buster," Wikipedia. The "Big Five" single is dated 1970 and the album 1972. "Prince Buster - Big Five," Discogs, accessed October 5, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/1332667; "Prince Buster - Big Five," Discogs, accessed October 5, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/1648546.
  16. The Rough Guide calls it a semi-instrumental and credits Val Bennett's tenor; Bradley calls it "practically instrumental." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 31-32; Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 102.
  17. "Prince Buster," artist page, Official Charts, accessed October 5, 2026, https://www.officialcharts.com/artist/12903/prince-buster/, which shows "Al Capone" entering on March 1, 1967. Bradley: "a Top 20 British pop-chart hit with 'Al Capone' in April 1967"; it and the Skatalites' "Guns of Navarone" became "the first Jamaican-produced recognized British hits." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 129, 153. Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop," which reached number 2 in 1964, was recorded in London. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 151, 153. Masouri likewise says British pop fans first heard "the real Jamaican sound" when Prince Buster, then Desmond Dekker, "broke into the UK Top 20" in 1967. John Masouri, liner notes to Desmond Dekker, Action! (Charly Records BLP 003), excerpt posted as "Desmond Dekker - Action! (Charly Records BLP 003)," John Masouri, December 6, 2025, https://www.johnmasouri.com/single-post/desmond-dekker-action-charly-records-blp-003.
  18. On Morgan and Morris, Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 58, and Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 31. Katz confirms that Isaacs recorded for Buster, but calls the record "Ballroom Floor." David Katz, "Gregory Isaacs Obituary," Guardian, October 25, 2010, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/oct/25/gregory-isaacs-obituary. No source was read for the Dunkley and "Everything Crash" sides.
  19. Bradley lists the performers as Jimmy Cliff, the Blues Busters, Millie Small, Monty Morris and Prince Buster, backed by Byron Lee's Dragonaires. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 134, 137. Wikipedia says "This Is Ska!" was hosted by Tony Verity. "Prince Buster," Wikipedia.
  20. Bradley says he "joined the Nation of Islam in 1961." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 107. Augustyn writes that he converted after meeting Ali on the 1964 World's Fair trip, and that he took the name Yusef Muhammad Ali while keeping Prince Buster as his stage name; she also says the two had first met in London and that Ali had invited him to a Nation of Islam talk at Mosque 29 in Miami. Heather Augustyn, "Prince Buster on His Persecution as a Muslim," SkaBook (blog), February 26, 2016, https://skabook.com/2016/02/26/1242/; Augustyn, "Prince Buster the Boxer," which also gives the Harlem meeting with Jimmy Cliff.
  21. Augustyn, "Prince Buster the Boxer," quoting the Daily Gleaner of September 19, October 5, and November 5, 1964, which name the opponent as Gene Coy and report that the purses were paid after the inquiry, with a reprimand for Coy's trainer.
  22. "Madness - The Prince," Discogs, accessed October 5, 2026, https://www.discogs.com/release/381870. The Official Charts give "The Prince" a peak of 16 and "One Step Beyond" a peak of 2, both in 1979. "Madness," artist page, Official Charts, accessed October 5, 2026, https://www.officialcharts.com/artist/28003/madness/.
  23. "Prince Buster," Official Charts. "Whine and Grine" entered on April 4, 1998, and peaked at 21. The Levi's advertisement is reported in "Prince Buster," Wikipedia.
  24. On his British tours, Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 129, 150. No source was read for his buying back his records secondhand.
  25. "Prince Buster," Wikipedia.
  26. "Legendary Ska Singer Prince Buster Is Dead," Jamaica Gleaner, September 8, 2016, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20160908/legendary-ska-singer-prince-buster-dead, which names his widow, Mola Ali, "sister and children." No source was found for the number of children.

World of Jamaican Music: the whole map