Vincent "Randy" Chin

Vincent "Randy" Chin (3 October 1937 – 2 February 2003) was a Jamaican record producer and entrepreneur who ran the Randy's shop, recording studio, and record label, later moving to New York City and setting up the VP Records empire, now the world's largest independent label and distributor of Caribbean music.

Biography

Chin was the son of a carpenter who left mainland China for a brief stay in Cuba, and then permanently settled in the 1920s in Jamaica. As a teenager in the early 1950s, Vincent oversaw the stocking and maintenance of jukeboxes in the island's bars for Isaac Issa, a prominent Syrian-Jamaican businessman. He kept the excess and replaced records and used them to open up his Randy's Records store on the corner of East and Tower streets in Kingston in 1958 on (the name coming from an American record store that sponsored an R&B radio show that could be picked up on the island). His son, Clive Chin, explained: "He kept dem records, and that was the springboard of his business, y'know?".

He began recording local artists, becoming one of the first to issue locally recorded music on the island. Early successes as a producer included ska singles by calypso singer Lord Creator...

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