ISLAND OUTPOST - Key Persons

Chris Blackwell

Job Titles:

Island Records
Our Founder

Born in London in 1937, Blackwell spent his childhood in Jamaica. Sent back to England at age 10 to finish his education, Blackwell returned to Jamaica in 1955 and held a variety of jobs, including selling real estate, renting motor scooters and acting as aide-de-camp to the Governor of Jamaica. However, when he heard an ensemble led by blind pianist Lance Hayward at the Half Moon Hotel in Montego Bay, Blackwell decided to record them and, borrowing the name from Alec Waugh's novel, Island in the Sun, founded Island Records. In 1960, Island Records opened an office in Kingston, Jamaica, and a series of local hit singles soon followed. The growing Jamaican immigrant population in England also bought Island's discs and, finding that he was selling more records in England than in Jamaica, Blackwell moved Island's headquarters to London in 1962. A succession of minor hits followed, mainly ska records from the seminal Jamaican producers of the time, including Duke Reid, Leslie Kong and Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd, and within a few years Blackwell had produced or licensed several hundred singles for Island and its various subsidiary labels in Jamaica and Britain. In 1964, Blackwell produced "My Boy Lollipop" by a 15-year-old Jamaican girl named Millie, and it became the worldwide hit that launched Island's global fortunes, selling more than 7 million copies. (Aware of his independent label's limitations, Blackwell licensed the record to Fontana Records to ensure wider exposure and distribution.