The Twinkle Brothers
Band. Reggae, roots
- Active
- 1964-present
- Also known as
- Twinkle Brothers, Norman Grant, Ralston Grant
The Twinkle Brothers are a roots band from Falmouth, Trelawny, built around the brothers Norman and Ralston Grant, with Norman as drummer, singer and principal songwriter. A Rastafarian called So Mi Say named them, because they sang under the stars.
They came up through the Festival song contests, and Norman made his first record for Leslie Kong's Beverley's in the mid-1960s, for a fee of ten pounds; a song for Duke Reid paid them six copies of the record. From 1970 they recorded for Bunny Lee, with the Soul Syndicate behind them, and for Phil Pratt, Lee Perry and Jack Ruby. By the mid-1970s the band was Norman on drums, Ralston on vocals and guitar, Derrick Brown on bass, Eric Bernard on keyboards, and Karl Hyatt and Bongo Asher on percussion, and their self-produced album Rasta Pon Top (1975), built mainly at Channel One, came out in Britain on Grounation.
Virgin signed them to its Front Line label, which issued Love (1978) and Praise Jah (1979), and then Countrymen (1980). Norman moved to England and ran the band from there on his own Twinkle label; after Jacob Miller's sunset he toured with Inner Circle, he recorded for Jah Shaka, and from 1986 the band made records with the Polish highland group Trebunie-Tutki.
Last updated October 21, 2026
Connections
- Soul Syndicate (backing group)
- Lee "Scratch" Perry (producer)
- Bunny "Striker" Lee (producer)
- Duke Reid (producer)
- Leslie Kong (producer)
- Phil Pratt (producer)
- Jack Ruby (producer)
- Jah Shaka (producer)
- Inner Circle (toured with)
- Channel One (session work)
Notes
- Angus Taylor, "Interview: Norman Grant from Twinkle Brothers," United Reggae, January 15, 2016, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n2034/011016/interview-norman-grant-from-twinkle-brothers. "The Twinkle Brothers: Virgin Frontline, 1978/1979," Kill Your Pet Puppy (blog), accessed October 21, 2026, https://www.killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/?p=3008 quotes Norman Grant: "I do most of the writing."
- Taylor, "Interview: Norman Grant."
- Taylor, "Interview: Norman Grant," which dates the Beverley's record to 1966; the Kill Your Pet Puppy biography quotes Grant giving 1964.
- Taylor, "Interview: Norman Grant." On Pratt and Perry: "Twinkle Brothers: Virgin Frontline." On Ruby: Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 366.
- Taylor, "Interview: Norman Grant."
- "Twinkle Brothers: Virgin Frontline." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 455, names the Twinkle Brothers among the acts Virgin signed in Jamaica.
- Taylor, "Interview: Norman Grant." On the Twinkle label: "Twinkle Brothers: Virgin Frontline."
