Born in 1958 in Kingston, Jamaica, Noel Ellis spent his early childhood in that city's infamous Trenchtown district. The son of reggae-soul singer Alton Ellis, the younger Ellis turned out to have a pretty good voice of his own, and even recorded an unreleased song, "It Has Been a Long Time," backed by the Gladiators, at Channel One while he was still a teenager. Alton left Jamaica and relocated to Toronto, and Noel eventually joined his father there