Mention reggae music and names like Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff and such readily come to mind, star frontmen. The longest lasting fixture, though for some 30-odd years, now is the team of drummer Lowell Dunbar and bass guitarist Robert Shakespeare, known by their nicknames as Sly & Robbie.
This premiere rhythm section, dubbed the Riddim Twins, very well may be the most prolific recording artists ever (that includes The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, et al), having played on or produced literally about 200,000 songs. In their course of their career, they changed the face of reggae several times: in 1976, they introduced a harder beat called "Rockers", which replaced the once prevalent "one drop" style and, in the early 1980s, introduced the "rub a dub" sound. And, beyond reggae, they had a strong, if largely unacknowledged hand as producers in influencing pop R&B and rap, developing 80s trend toward computer assisted music and programming which now is a staple in the industry and practice by which a song's "hook" or chorus is sung by a guest, while the verses are rapped.
They have worked with a laundry list of stars in Jamaica (Peter Tosh, Black Uhuru, Sean Paul) and around the world (Rolling Stones, Carlos Santana, Sting). Sly & Robbie also are executive producers for rising hip-hop star Desdamonas 2005 Minnesota Music Award winning album The Ledge. Recently they were at Minneapolis' First Avenue, where, between sound checks, I caught up with Sly Dunbar.
IN: One of your early hallmarks was working with Island Records owner Chris Blackwell, wasn't it? And a then fairly unknown singer named Grace Jones.
SLY: Blackwell knew us from a long time in Jamaica. He had this girl, Grace Jones. She was Jamaican and lived in Paris. She was doing disco. He gave us a record, which, to this day, I haven't listened to yet. She wanted to do reggae. He called a session and said, "Let's go to Nassau." They were thinkin' of rehearsin' first and then go and cut the track. Robbie say to him, "No, let's rehearse in the studio. And cut as we rehearse the song. And put it on tape." This first song we cut was "Private Life". The sound
of Grace Jones really came out of the Black Uhuru sound.
IN: The signature sound of Sly & Robbie went from the sessions with Blackwell and Grace Jones to all over the world. How have you kept it from going to your head?
SLY: We think of ourselves as being ordinary people. Just like somebody who goes to work. A plumber, he fix the plumbing. We fix the sound. We're just musicians. We never let stardom try to take us to a different place. We respect everyone, because we breathe the same air. If a bomb drop tomorrow, all of us gonna feel it. You have to be just natural with everybody.
IN: How and why did you come to work with Desdamona?
SLY: She blew me away. I heard some stuff [my manager] was playing. I said, "Who's this? Cause she's wicked. Keep on playing it." [Afterward], I always asked, "Who's that spoken-word lady?" We were doing an album and [I thought] we should probably get her on it. But, something with the record company. It took so long, a drawn out and everything. I personally believe in her.
IN: Why?
SLY: I think Des can be very big. There's something special in her art. You hear the soul inside. Someone might complain, "She's white." I don't care about that. She's wicked. Music hasn't got any color.
IN: You've been at it forever. What keeps you and Robbie going?
SLY: People. [And] every time we do something. Like with Grace Jones, we listen and say, "That was wicked." Then, we say, "Aw, let's do something better." We keep on going for it, going for it. And we can't reach it. So, we keep going for it.
IN: When you perform live, what's the biggest difference between that and the studio.
SLY: It's almost the same thing. We carry the same attitude in the studio. One is different from the other, but first thing you have to have the discipline. And the same thing you have to have on the stage is discipline. You're in a group of musicians. So, everybody has to sound good together,
not good separately. And we carry that discipline, both live and in the studio.
written by Dwight Hobbes for Insight News