Lehman Serikeesna Gopthal (1 March 1938 – 29 August 1997), known as Lee Gopthal, was a Jamaican-British record label owner and promoter, the co-founder of

Trojan Records Trojan Records is a British record label founded in 1968. It specialises in ska, rocksteady, reggae and dub music. The label currently operates under the Sanctuary Records Group. The name ''Trojan'' comes from the Croydon-built Trojan truck ...

Life and career

He was born in Constant Spring, Jamaica, into a family of Indian origin. His father, Sikarum Gopthal, came to Britain on the '' Empire Windrush'' in 1948, "108 Cambridge Road", ''Metroland Cultures''
Retrieved 3 August 2021 and Lee moved to Britain in 1952. In the late 1950s he bought a property in

Maida Vale Maida Vale ( ) is an affluent residential district consisting of the northern part of Paddington in West London, west of St John's Wood and south of Kilburn. It is also the name of its main road, on the continuous Edgware Road. Maida Vale is ...

, part of which he leased to record producer Sonny Roberts, and trained as an accountant. By the early 1960s, he was representing Jamaican record producer

Leslie Kong Leslie Kong (20 December 1933 – 9 August 1971) was an influential Chinese-Jamaican reggae producer. Career Leslie and his two older brothers Cecil and Lloyd ran a restaurant, ice cream parlour and record shop called Beverley's in Orange Stre ...

in the UK. In 1963 he set up a distribution company, Beat & Commercial Records, later known as B&C. Among the Jamaican

record label A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the produ ...

s distributed by Gopthal was Island Records, owned by Chris Blackwell, and in 1966 Gopthal and Blackwell established a retail shop, Musicland, in

Willesden Green Willesden () is an area of northwest London, situated 5 miles (8 km) northwest of Charing Cross. It is historically a parish in the county of Middlesex that was incorporated as the Municipal Borough of Willesden in 1933, and has formed p ...

. Several additional Musicland shops opened between 1967 and 1970, mainly selling Jamaican records to the Afro-Caribbean community in Britain. Biography, ''AllMusic''
Retrieved 3 August 2021
Retrieved 3 August 2021 Many of the shops, including one in

Portobello Road Portobello Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from south to north, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is ...

, were rebranded as Muzik City in the early 1970s. "Muzik City", ''British Record Store Archive''
Retrieved 3 August 2021 Gopthal also set up Pyramid Records, and, in 1967, co-founded

with Blackwell. The Trojan label licensed a succession of Jamaican recordings supplied by producers such as

Duke Reid Arthur "Duke" Reid CD (21 July 1915 – 1 January 1975) was a Jamaican record producer, DJ and label owner. He ran one of the most popular sound systems of the 1950s called Reid's Sound System, whilst Duke himself was known as The Troja ...

Clancy Eccles Clancy Eccles (9 December 1940 in Dean Pen, St. Mary, Jamaica – 30 June 2005 in Spanish Town, Jamaica)Katz was a Jamaican ska and reggae singer, songwriter, arranger, promoter, record producer and talent scout. Known mostly for his early reg ...

, Lee Perry,

Harry J Harry Zephaniah Johnson (6 July 1945 – 3 April 2013), known by the stage name Harry J, was a Jamaican reggae record producer. Biography Born in Westmoreland Parish, Jamaica, Johnson started to play music with the Virtues as a bass player be ...

, and Leslie Kong. Gopthal achieved commercial success releasing chart singles including

Desmond Dekker Desmond Dekker (16 July 1941 – 25 May 2006) was a Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae singer-songwriter and musician. Together with his backing group The Aces (consisting of Wilson James and Easton Barrington Howard), he had one of the earlie ...

's 1969 hit "

Israelites The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...

" (on Pyramid), as well as records by

Dandy Livingstone Dandy Livingstone (born Robert Livingstone Thompson, 14 December 1943, Kingston, Jamaica) is a British-Jamaican ska, rocksteady, and reggae musician and producer, best known for his 1972 hit, "Suzanne Beware of the Devil", and for his song, ...

, Harry J's Allstars, the Pioneers, and

the Upsetters The Upsetters was the name given to the house band for Jamaican reggae producer Lee "Scratch" Perry. The name of the band comes from Perry's nickname of Upsetter, after his song "I Am the Upsetter", a musical dismissal of his former boss Coxso ...

. Blackwell left Trojan in 1972, and Gopthal sold the label in 1974. The Musicland and Muzik City stores closed by 1977. Gopthal continued to have a limited involvement in the record industry until the late 1970s, when he returned to a career in insurance. He died in 1997, aged 59. In 2020, he was posthumously recognised for his work by the Jamaica Reggae Industry Association (JaRIA). Howard Campbell, "Gopthal hailed for Trojan work", ''Jamaica Observer'', 11 February 2020
Retrieved 3 August 2021

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gopthal, Lee 1938 births 1997 deaths British music industry executives Jamaican people of Indian descent English people of Jamaican descent