In memoriam: Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare
Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, 1980s. Image credit: David Corio. Image source: The Guardian
On Tuesday The Guardian carried an obituary for the drummer Sly Dunbar, who together with his bassist partner Robbie Shakespeare made up the rhythm section Sly & Robbie. Both men had been mentored by members of Bob Marley's Wailers: Sly by drummer Carlton Barrett, and Robbie by Carlton's brother, bassist Aston "Family Man" Barrett, who gave him his first bass, a Hofner. Aston also helped Robbie get gigs. That's a 19-year-old Robbie playing bass on "Concrete Jungle," the first track on the Wailers' 1973 breakthrough album Catch A Fire.
Sly & Robbie were a key element in the dark, spare sound of Black Uhuru's hugely influential Showcase album, released in 1979; over the solid kick-drum and bass foundation, Dunbar added distinctive accents on the off-beat. The songs were released in various versions; the extended dub mixes put the rhythm section at the forefront. Which was a good thing: some of Michael Rose and Duckie Simpson's lyrics were misogynistic ("Shine eye gal is a trouble to a man") or anti-abortion (in "Abortion" they call the procedure "first-degree murder"). But "General Penitentiary" was their masterpiece ("Cause the food that you take to save your life can let you lose it the same. . .General Penitentiary, it's a warehouse of human slavery"):
Lyrics aside, sonically Showcase felt somewhat like the reggae equivalent of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures (particularly tracks like "Candidate"). The spareness of Showcase also clearly influenced the sound of the Au Pairs (as on "Headache (for Michelle)," which has never felt more relevant). But Sly & Robbie's music wasn't only dark and dread. They also backed the duo Althea & Donna's cheeky 1978 dancehall hit "Uptown Top Ranking," name-checked on the Psychedelic Furs' "We Love You" from their debut album just a few months later. (The Furs lyric had been a mystery to me until my girlfriend pulled the Althea & Donna album out of her collection and gave it a spin to dispel my ignorance. Dispelling my ignorance is a task my girlfriend and now life partner continues to this day.)
A few "Uptown Top Ranking" lyrics (written by Althea Forrest & Donna Reid):
See me in mi heels an' ting |
Sly & Robbie quickly became in-demand session musicians and producers. Working at Island Records' Compass Point Studios, they provided the rhythm section for Grace Jones' Warm Leatherette (1980) and Nightclubbing (1981), her re-imaginings of songs by The Normal, Roxy Music, Tom Petty, Iggy Pop, and The Police, among others. Jones' version of The Pretenders' "Private Life" is definitive:
I'm clearly not the only person to hear a Joy Division connection in Sly & Robbie's sound; the B-side of the "Private Life" single was a non-album cover of "She's Lost Control." (That cover, though, deliberately subverts the original. I find the arrangement to be too busy and the vocals too declamatory. A rare misfire.)
Sly & Robbie continued performing and recording together for decades, backing musicians as disparate as Gwen Guthrie ("Padlock"), Gwen Stefani ("Underneath It All"), and Bob Dylan (Infidels). Their collaboration ended only with Robbie Shakespeare's death from kidney failure in 2021 at age 68. Now Sly Dunbar has followed him at age 73. Not to take anything away from their later work, but it is the indelible music they created as the late 1970s shaded into the early 1980s for which they will always be remembered.
Let's give Althea & Donna the last word. "No More Fighting":
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No more fussing and fighting We want no more, we want no more No more stealing and back biting We want no more, we want no more Alone I sit in deep meditation Wondering why the wicked still survive Killing and stealing is part of their daily life I wanna know, I wanna know, I wanna know When it's all gonna end |
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