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Leslie Kong
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Leslie Kong

Leslie Kong (20 December 1933 – 9 August 1971) was a Jamaican reggae producer.

Early life

Kong was born into a Chinese-Jamaican family. He had a "relatively comfortable upbringing" and attended St. George's College in Kingston.

Career

Leslie and his two older brothers Cecil and Lloyd ran a restaurant, ice cream parlour and record shop called Beverley's in Orange Street, Kingston. In 1961, he encountered a young Jimmy Cliff outside of his shop singing a song he had written called "Dearest Beverley", in the hopes that the mention of the establishment would convince Kong to record him. This encounter led Kong to launch his own record label, Beverley's, and to record Cliff's song, launching Cliff's career in the process.

Cliff took on an A&R role for the label, and brought Bob Marley to Kong's attention. In 1962, Kong recorded Marley's first single: "One Cup of Coffee" and "Judge Not", and Jimmy Cliff's first hit, "Miss Jamaica". Kong, known in Jamaican music circles as "the Chinaman", quickly established himself as the island's leading producer of local popular music. Throughout the 1960s Kong kept recording many leading Jamaican artists from ska to reggae through rocksteady...

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Ska Rocksteady

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From the archive

Career timeline

Stories about Leslie Kong from the JamaicansMusic archive, oldest first · 1962–2026

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  1. 1962

    Music

    ‘Hurricane Hattie’: James Chambers Becomes Jimmy Cliff and Leslie Kong Gets His First No. 1, 1962

    A Somerton teenager who renames himself after the cliffs he wants to climb walks into Beverley’s with a ballad too slow for the charts. Derrick Morgan sends him back with a ska warning named for the 1961 storm — and Leslie Kong’s label has its first monster hit.

  2. 1968

    Music

    ‘Do the Reggay’: Toots Hibbert Gives the Music Its Name, 1968

    After ‘54-46 That’s My Number’ puts the Maytals in Kingston’s top rank, Toots Hibbert records a dance-craze single whose title compresses ‘streggae’ into ‘reggay’ — and, in his telling, coins the word that will name an entire genre.

  3. 1969

    Music

    ‘Monkey Man’: The Maytals Break Abroad and Leslie Kong Delivers Their First UK Chart Single, 1969

    Produced by Leslie Kong on Beverley’s, ‘Monkey Man’ turns a lover’s warning into one of the Maytals’ defining hits — and their first real signal outside Jamaica, scraping the lower reaches of the British charts and setting up a decade of covers.

    Music

    ‘Wonderful World, Beautiful People’: Cliff’s Trojan Masterpiece Opens the A&M Years, 1969

    After a string of Leslie Kong hits and the 1967 set Hard Road to Travel, Jimmy Cliff delivers an eleven-track album on Trojan — retitled Wonderful World, Beautiful People in America — with ‘Many Rivers to Cross,’ ‘Vietnam’ and a title track destined for international charts.

  4. 1970

    Music

    ‘Pressure Drop’: A Leslie Kong Classic Becomes a Soundtrack Cornerstone, 1970

    Toots Hibbert writes one of reggae’s most durable prayers against injustice — a Leslie Kong production that lands on The Harder They Come soundtrack and later earns a second life through punk and rock covers.

  5. 1972

    Music

    ‘Funky Kingston’: Chris Blackwell Signs Toots and the Maytals to Island and Takes Reggae to the Rock Audience, 1972

    After Leslie Kong’s death, the Maytals become Toots and the Maytals on Island Records. Funky Kingston — recorded in Jamaica and mixed in London — is the album that puts Hibbert’s voice in front of the rock crowd Rolling Stone would later rank among the 500 greatest.

  6. 2026

    Music

    Jackie Jackson, the Bass Behind Toots and the Maytals and a Generation of Jamaican Hits, Dies at 79

    Clifton ‘Jackie’ Jackson died on the morning of Wednesday, September 23, 2026, at Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay after a hospitalisation that began in July, the Gleaner and Jamaica Observer report. For more than 50 years his bass anchored Toots and the Maytals; before that it carried rocksteady out of Treasure Isle and onto Leslie Kong-produced records by Desmond Dekker, The Melodians and Jimmy Cliff, and Paul Simon’s ‘Mother and Child Reunion.’ He was predeceased by his wife, singer Karen Smith, and leaves four daughters.

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