Ken Khouri

Kenneth Lloyd Khouri (1917 – 20 September 2003) was a pioneering Jamaican record producer and founder of Federal Records, the first recording studio in Jamaica, which was sold to Bob Marley's Tuff Gong record label in 1981. He is credited by reggae historians for the birth of rocksteady in the 1960s. Rocksteady later mixed with Jamaican mento, a genre in which Khouri also had a pioneering role, leading to the creation of reggae music.^{[citation needed]}

American singer Johnny Nash to recorded his first international hit "Hold Me Tight", which went on to sell six million copies globally and has been credited with first putting reggae in the American listener charts, at the Federal Studio, with his son Paul one of the producers. . He and Nash's produced "Tears on my Pillow", which reached number one in the UK Singles Chart in July 1975 for one week.

He was born in St Catherine Parish, the son of a Lebanese immigrant father Alfred Khouri, and a mother of Cuban origin, Alista Hylton, and grew up in Richmond and Highgate. His family was in the dry goods and furniture business. He moved to Kingston as a young man and joined the retail company E.A. Issa and Brothers Limited which owned jukeboxes operating in rum bars all over the island. The company was owned by the Issa family who were friends of his family, and there he learned about the music business.

When his father required specialist hospital treatment, he flew with him to Miami, Florida, and by chance overheard someone selling a disc recording machine. Khouri bought the machine and discs, and returned with it to Kingston, where in 1947 he set up a voice recording service. Khouri made recordings of local bands, and since there were no record pressing facilities in Jamaica, he sent them to the United Kingdom to be pressed.

Realising the commercial possibilities, he decided to set up a music recording business and traveled to California to acquire the equipment he needed to set up his own plant. Having until then had records pressed in the US, he also set up a record pressing plant in the early 1950s, and began pressing copies of American records under licence. Initially, Khouri mainly released mento and calypso music, later recording early examples of ska and rocksteady.

In the early 1950s, he set up the Times Record Limited label with Alec Durie, owner of the Times store in Kingston, and began producing Mento records by local musicians, the first time this had been done in Jamaica. One of his earliest recordings was Lord Flea's "Naughty Little Flea". The records pressed by Khouri and others such Stanley Motta helped created the golden age of mento music and brought it to a new audience.

Times Records Limited was renamed as Federal Records in the early 1960s.

The company was a powerhouse during the 1960s and 1970s. Ken Lazarus, Ernie Smith, Ken Boothe, Pluto Shervington, guitarist Ernest Ranglin, Don Drummond, Winston Turner Quintet, Eric Grant Orchestra, Gladstone Anderson, Cecil Lloyd, the Maytals, Eric Morris, Granville Williams Orchestra, Delroy Wilson, Marcia Griffiths, Bob Andy, Derrick Harriott, Derrick Morgan, Tinga Stewart, Roland Alphonso, John Holt, the Meditations, John Jones, Eddie Lovette, the Zodiacs, Byron Lee & the Dragonaires, Archie Lewis, were just some of the acts who recorded hit songs there. The Jamaican music from Dr. No was also recorded at Federal Studios.