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 →

Winston Grennan

Artist. Ska, rocksteady, reggae

Active
1962-2000
Sunrise
September 16, 1944
Sunset
October 27, 2000

Winston Grennan was a session drummer, one of the players credited with originating the one-drop beat, who played on a large share of Jamaica's records between 1962 and 1972 and then on American sessions after he moved to New York.

He started out singing and playing keyboards and became a drummer when he sat in for a missing drummer with the Caribbeats. His session work began in 1962, and over the next decade he played for Leslie Kong, Byron Lee and others: Toots and the Maytals' "Pressure Drop," Desmond Dekker's "Israelites," and Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come" and "You Can Get It If You Really Want"; he played on most of the Harder They Come soundtrack and appears in the film. He is credited with creating the one drop in the late 1960s, and younger drummers he influenced included Carlton Barrett and Sly Dunbar; Lloyd Brevett credited the beat with shaping "the very heart of the sound."

He moved to New York in the early 1970s to study jazz, worked with the saxophonist Robin Kenyatta, and became a session drummer for Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye; he also played on Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion." In the early 1980s he drummed for Kid Creole and the Coconuts and formed his own band, Ska Rocks. He departed in 2000, at fifty-six, months after a cancer diagnosis.

Last updated November 5, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Chris Burke, "Drum Heroes Week: Winston Grennan," MusicRadar, September 17, 2012, https://www.musicradar.com/rhythm/drum-heroes-week-winston-grennan-563867, which calls him "one of the true originators of the one-drop beat" and says he played on "almost every other Jamaican artist recording between 1962 and 1972."
  2. Burke, "Drum Heroes Week."
  3. Burke, "Drum Heroes Week." On Kong and Lee, the soundtrack and the film: "Winston Grennan," Wikipedia, accessed October 21, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Grennan, citing David Katz's Guardian obituary of November 8, 2000, and Jon Pareles in the New York Times, November 4, 2000.
  4. "Winston Grennan," which also names Tin Leg and Willie Williams among the drummers he mentored. Gary Alexander, "Justice for the 'Unknown Legend,'" HV Music, accessed November 5, 2026, https://www.hvmusic.com/article/alexander/winston_grennan/.
  5. Burke, "Drum Heroes Week," which dates the move to 1972; Wikipedia gives 1973. "Winston Grennan."
  6. "Winston Grennan," which says the cancer was diagnosed in May 2000 and that he kept recording almost to the end.

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