Beverley's
Jamaican record label
Beverley's was a Jamaican record label active between 1961 and 1971, owned by the record producer Leslie Kong. Beverley's was essential to the development of ska and rocksteady into reggae. The label launched the careers of Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley, having released Cliff's first recording "Dearest Beverley" in 1961 and Marley's early singles "Judge Not" and "One Cup of Coffee" in 1962.
History
The Beverley's ice-cream parlour/record shop at 135 Orange Street in Kingston, Jamaica, was run by the Chinese Jamaican Kong family, one of whom, Leslie Kong, started the Beverley's record label. Kong launched the label in 1961 after Jimmy Cliff auditioned the song "Dearest Beverley" at the shop, the first release on the label being Cliff's "Hurricane Hattie", with "Dearest Beverley" on the b-side. Prior to this, Beverley's was a restaurant and records shop owned by Leslie Kong and his brothers, Fats and Cecil and never had produced records. Kong had no experience of record production but had the finances to employ the cream of Jamaica's musical talent. The association with Cliff continued, including the "Miss Jamaica" single, and Cliff's debut self-titled album.
Throughout the 1960s, Beverley's recorded many Jamaican artists including Desmond Dekker (including many of his biggest hits such as "Israelites" and "007"), the Maytals ("Monkey Man"), Derrick Morgan ("Forward March"), and the Pioneers ("Long Shot Kick De Bucket"), and launched the career of Bob Marley with his first two singles. Marley returned to Beverley's with the Wailers for several more singles including "Soul Shakedown Party".
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3500796. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1961, 1971 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Beverley's” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.