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 →

Roy Cousins

Producer. Rocksteady, reggae, dub, dancehall

Active
1962-present
Sunrise
August 25, 1949, Kingston
Also known as
Roy Anthony Cousins, The Royals, Royals, Roy Cousins and the Royals, The Tempests, Tamoki-Wambesi

Roy Cousins, born in Kingston in 1949, led the vocal group the Royals, whose "Pick Up the Pieces" is one of the founding records of roots reggae, and produced them and others on his own Tamoki and Wambesi labels, paying for the sessions out of his wages from the post office.

His aunt took him to church, where he sang in the junior choir, and he formed his first group at Tarrant Senior School in 1962. The Royals grew out of the singers who gathered at his yard in Cockburn Pen, where he had the only guitar for miles; their classic lineup was Cousins with Bertram Johnson, Keith Smith and Errol Wilson. They cut "Pick Up the Pieces" at Studio One in 1967, but Coxsone Dodd held it back, then issued it in 1973 under the name the Tempests. Along the way the Royals recorded for Federal, Duke Reid, Lloyd Daley, Joe Gibbs, Lee Perry and others, and sang harmonies for Yabby You at the Black Ark.

In 1973 Cousins launched Wambesi and Tamoki with the Royals' "Down Comes the Rain," followed the same year by his own new cut of "Pick Up the Pieces," with an early King Tubby dub, "Llongo," on the flip. Songs such as "Ghetto Man," "Sufferer of the Ghetto," "Blacker Black" and "Promised Land" were collected on the album Pick Up the Pieces, which the Rough Guide sets beside the best roots harmony albums, and its success in Britain let him leave the post office in 1977. He also produced other singers with the same care: Gregory Isaacs's "Way of Life," which the Rough Guide counts among Isaacs's greatest, Lloyd Ruddock's "Genuine Way" and Naggo Morris's "Down in the Ghetto." The Nexus Dub album gathered dubs of his riddims by King Tubby, Sylvan Morris, Errol Thompson, Scientist and others.

Around 1980 he left the Royals, who carried on as the Jays, and concentrated on production, recording the deejay Charlie Chaplin, Earl Sixteen and the Meditations and producing Prince Far I's last album. He later moved to Liverpool, where he ran a record shop and kept the Tamoki Wambesi Dove label going.

Last updated October 14, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 131, 135, 183, 184. Birth date: K. A. Jones, "About," Tamoki Wambesi Dove, accessed October 6, 2026, https://tamokiwambesi.com/about/.
  2. Jones, "About."
  3. Jones, "About."
  4. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 131, 183.
  5. Jones, "About."
  6. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 184.
  7. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 184, 185 (comparing it with the Wailing Souls' Wild Suspense, the Abyssinians' Forward On To Zion and the Mighty Diamonds' Right Time). The year he left the post office is from "Roy Cousins," Wikipedia, accessed October 6, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cousins.
  8. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 184.
  9. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 234.
  10. Jones, "About." On Charlie Chaplin, Earl Sixteen, the Meditations and Prince Far I: "Roy Cousins," Wikipedia, accessed October 6, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cousins.
  11. "Roy Cousins," Wikipedia, accessed October 6, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cousins. Wikipedia says he emigrated after Prince Far I's life was taken in 1983, citing David Katz's Solid Foundation.

World of Jamaican Music: the whole map