Blackwell, Chris(topher) (1937- )

English entertainment entrepreneur, who founded the legendary Island record label in 1959, and Island Pictures in 1983. His Palm Pictures company, created in 1998, continues to make a significant contribution to independent music. In 1999 he launched his real-time interactive music site at Sputnik7.com, an online audio-visual music and entertainment site supporting independent music and film.

Island Records emerged as one of the most progressive labels in the industry, recording musical artists such as Steve Winwood (who eventually formed the band Traffic) and Cat Stevens in the 1960s; Bob Marley and the Wailers (who introduced reggae into pop mainstream) in the 1970s; and U2 (rejected by major British labels) in the 1980s. Island Pictures released a number of award-winning films, including the Academy Award-winning Kiss of the Spider Woman and The Trip to Bountiful (both 1985). Palm Pictures, an audiovisual company, uses DVD technology to promote music as part of a multimedia experience.

Born in London, England, Blackwell was brought up in Jamaica where his mother was a member of a wealthy plantation family. He was educated in England from the age of ten and returned to Jamaica in 1955. He had various jobs (selling property, hiring out scooters, and acting as an aide-de-camp to the governor of Jamaica) before spending six months in New York, where he developed a keen ear for musical talent on the jazz circuit. Island Records' first recording artist was the blind pianist Lance Hayward, and its first big hit was the single ‘My Boy Lollipop’, by 15-year-old Jamaican singer Millie Small, which sold 6 million copies worldwide in 1964. Blackwell later helped to finance the cult Jamaican film The Harder They Come, starring Jimmy Cliff, in 1971. During the early 1990s, he created Island Outpost, a hotel and resort company with properties in the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Miami. In 1997 he left the board of Polygram, which had bought the Island label in 1989 for an estimated US$300 million, to start Palm Pictures.