Slyght Of HandSlyght Of Hand
It's a typical evening at the Mixing Lab studio in Kingston.
The large and comfortably secure chamber of the city's most famous
modern recording facility seems a world away from the dark city
streets outside. A television monitor on a wall spews out a continuous
stream of mindless images as an engineer sits over an array of
fader bars at the main mixing board.
At the back of the room, entrepreneur and production master Sly
Dunbar sits intently behind an Akai 3000 drum machine, wheeling
every control, honing every meter, listening for the perfect sound.
Dunbar's casual appearance (denim clad with sunglasses and a roundtop
baseball cap) belies his significance to reggae music.
Nearby, singer Pam Hall carefully reads over her lyric sheet.
Dunbar sets the opening measures of the Heptones' version of Curtis
Mayfield's "Choice Of Color" in a continuous loop. Over
the classic Studio One rhythm, thundering bass and a keyboard
lead erupt from the hands of Robbie Lyn. Sly descends with a modern
drum loop patterning the original, and Lloyd "Gitsy"
Willis sweeps over it all with tougher than tough rhythm guitar.
Although Lowell "Sly" Dunbar is primarily known as
the drumming half of the rhythm team of 'Sly and Robbie,' he currently
spends all of his time as the principal operator of the Mixing
Lab and associated Taxi label,
co-owned by him and partner/bassist Robbie Shakespeare. Since
being launched into international stardom with Black Uhuru in
the early 1980s, Dunbar has devoted his time to developing reggae
music from the producer's chair. Dunbar is soft-spoken and sincere
as he sits in a modest office at the Mixing Lab to discuss his
work and career.
"I look at [dancehall] as part of the lowest form of music,"
he says, explaining his approach to legitimizing dancehall as
a music with longevity. "Rock steady I think is the best
form [of music], cause we have songs. So we can do the same thing
for dancehall [if] we just work on it, cause rock steady came
to that level. People like Boris (Boris Gardiner -- rock steady
session bass player) and all those people they work on it and
bring it to that level. So we could take dancehall and bring it
to that level, too. That is what we are trying to achieve. And
I think it can work [if] you get the singers into it. Sly explains
that the work of Chaka Demus and Pliers, who hit in 1993 with
"Murder She Wrote," was an important stage in the development
he is seeking. Since the track involved a singer as well as a
deejay, it broke with the trends of the time and became an international
hit. "I think people want to listen to a record that last
forever," says Dunbar. "Some dancehall is a one hit
thing and it's over. But I want to take dancehall and [make] it
last forever just like today you pick up and play 'Murder She
Wrote' and it's like, yea!"
The primary obstacle to Sly's goal lies in the nature of the international
record market. He feels there are too many different varieties
of music to combine to make one cohesive dancehall reggae album.
"If you were working [in America] with an artist, you do
some country and western, some rock and roll or R&B, you [don't]
mix it. With us in Jamaica, you have to make reggae, and there
is so many different version of reggae. You have reggae which
is one drop, you have the dancehall sound, you have lovers rock
style. And then you have like Chaka Demus with a kind of ska feel
that you have to do [and] hip-hop. So you have like five different
kind of music on one album for you to go into the international
market. If you do a straight up reggae album, some of the record
companies can't sell it, because hip-hop has gotten so big. You
have to dilute the reggae with the hip-hop for it to go into the
channel. So this is the problem we are faced with now."
Modern production trends have caused Sly to program more rhythms,
but he still plays a drum kit from time to time, depending on
the needs of a given producer. "What is lacking in Jamaican
music now, you're not getting the real soul of Jamaican records
as you used to get. You can't tell when every record sound the
same way. And the way you would listen to a drummer and say, 'this
fill is wicked,' you don't hear that no more. We try not to loose
the regular live session sound." Sly is also concerned about
the effect of programmed production on the ability of young drummers
in a live setting. "The thing about reggae live - it haven't
got any feel [anymore]. The drummer what they using haven't got
a feel to know when to jerk this rhythm some more; they don't
know how to push high hat - jerk it and make it real. Sometime
you listen to it, and it feel like this (he makes a weary droning
sound). If you're playing a one drop, you [have to] make it sound
solid. When they go into a studio they can get it [to] sound perfect,
but when they do a live concert and listen back to a cassette,
I don't know. With machine technology I don't think it giving
them a chance." While the electronic revolution has changed
the playing field, Sly says reggae is still growing and evolving.
He says that comparing reggae to rock and roll or reggae to R&B
over a given period shows relatively how much reggae has changed.
"If you go back and listen from the first time you heard
reggae until know, it's so much changes it has gone through you
would believe that it's the only kind of music that keep adding
new color to it every time. It just keep on growing."
Dunbar likes to produce every style from the sparsest, most hardcore
dancehall rhythms to mellower, one drop roots and everything in
between, but his primary focus is finding great singers and songwriters
to use his rhythm tracks. Among the artists who commonly record
for the Taxi label are Ambelique, Anthony Red Rose, Chaka Demus,
Ini Kamoze, Red Dragon, Yami Bolo, Bounty Killer, Michael Rose
and Pam Hall. In reality, almost any successful singer in Jamaica
has voiced at the Mixing Lab at one time or another.
Sly is continually searching for the next direction for reggae.
He gives the example of a version of Marcia Griffiths' "Truly,"
originally recorded for Coxson Dodd's Studio One in the late 60s
and rerecorded by Taxi several years ago. Sly combined a dancehall
drum pattern without a bassline (in the same style as the 'Bogle'
rhythm used on "Murder She Wrote") and a sustained chord
(like one would find in a soul tune) to complement her vocal.
He felt the experiment was ahead of its time musically, even though
it didn't turn out to be a hit.
Sly encourages his engineers to experiment and take chances as
well. He elaborates on a number of current production trends,
some of which may sound bizarre. "What's going to happen
now is merging the dancehall with R&B and dancehall with like
country western - just to make it different. Some of the engineers
are trying to do so many mixes, and [they] start merging a dancehall
beat with a soul type of keyboard, and it's working. So we gonna
take it now and experiment on it and try and get some singers
to come and write some songs to it. It would be an element of
the hip-hop beat and parts of the dancehall beat instead of changing
the dancehall beat to hip-hop beat. And we're going into samba,
the Brazil kind of rhythm - the salsa. We're going to incorporate
the whole of that. You might not sell a million copy or even ten-thousand
copies, but if people see what you're trying to do, people probably
appreciate the musicians trying to do something that sounds good.
That's what we are really all about, putting little changes into
the music, keep on updating."
Sly Dunbar's achievements as a producer are enough to earn him
a permanent place in reggae history, but his contribution to reggae
percussion is equally remarkable and influential. His youth in
the Waterhouse district of Kingston (where he was born in the
early 1950s) and his passion for music were the catalysts for
his career. He laughingly remembers taking his lunch breaks from
school and spending all his lunch money "punching" Studio
One records on a local jukebox. He also fondly conjures up memories
of watching Jamaica Bandstand and seeing the original Skatalites
in all their glory.
"I was really a Studio One fanatic - like everything I owned.
Coxson greatest one I ever known. I used to sit up and listen
to all his things. Jackie Mittoo and Lloyd Knibbs were the ones
who really inspire me, because when me listen to Studio One records,
I listen to the way Jackie play piano or Lloyd Knibbs play drums.
When you see them live, you could see the soul. I'd say, man!
wicked! Wicked! After that, me really get interested, cause it
was like all my life, wherever you were, like in Waterhouse there
was so many sounds, King Tubby's - music every day, every day,
twenty-four hours just keep on playing."
Sly started drumming for organist Ansel Collins at age fifteen.
His first record was a Collins' production with the Upsetters
called "Night Doctor." He then played on the Dave and
Ansel Collins record "Double Barrel," which became a
hit in Jamaica. "[Ansel Collins] was the one who really guide
me on the instrument, cause he used to play drums. So when he
need to do a session, I would be his personal drummer. He [would]
do a floor show sometime, and he would teach me how to play for
a floor show, cause I didn't have the experience." Sly also
gained experience playing with Tommy McCook and The Supersonics
and then with Ansel Collins and Lloyd Parks in Skin Flesh and
Bones. The latter outfit worked at Dickie Wong's Tit For Tat Club
on Red Hills Road in Kingston in the early 70s, becoming known
for an early soul inflected flavor of reggae.
"A lot of people don't know that most of the musicians in
Jamaica, we grew up playing more R&B in clubs than reggae.
I remember playing a typical dance, we play for an hour, and in
the hour you could play like six reggae songs versus the rest
had to be soul [or] R&B. So when we start making crossover,
it's not that we were trying to crossover, but we just think of
recording some funk."
It was during this time that Sly met Jo Jo Hoo Kim of Channel
One Studios. Jo Jo gave Sly some work in his session band which
became known as The Revolutionaries. It was a good choice on Hoo
Kim's part, because it led to Sly's first major rhythmic innovation.
Late in 1974 into early 1975, the Diamonds scored a number one
with "Right Time," thanks to the revolutionary drumming
of Dunbar, who made a rhythmic alteration which subsequently became
characteristic of the "rockers" sound. "That was
the turning point for rockers style. It was the first time the
drum was being played in that kind of pattern," explains
Dunbar, referring to the rhythm played on the rim of the snare
drum. "The first time it came out a lot of people didn't
think I was playing, they thought it was some effect from the
board. Every song we make [at Channel One], we used to cut a dub
to see if the drum sound was alright . . . We wanted the highhat
to be just like Motown. We try and try to get it to sound like
that. When you listen to the Channel One sound you can hear the
drum was upfront in the music."
By 1976, the rockers sound dominated the scene, dub albums were
selling by the cartload, and Sly Dunbar, firmly established at
Channel One, was as well respected in Kingston studios as top
sessioniers Santa Davis, Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace,
Mikey "Boo" Richards, and Carlton Barrett. Sly's bass
partners in the Revolutionaries were Lloyd Parks, Ranchie MacLean,
and Aston Barrett's youthful protege Robbie Shakespeare. At Channel
One, Sly also did occasional work for Bunny "Striker"
Lee. These sessions were always credited to the Aggrovators and
subsequently mixed at King Tubby's Studio -- becoming immortalized
in the dub tradition. Sly had in fact became so popular from the
mid to late seventies that by some estimates (including his own),
he actually played on a majority of the tracks recorded in Jamaica.
Virgin Frontline went so far as to release two Sly Dunbar albums
-- Sly Wicked and Slick and Simple Sly Man. By the
end of the decade, the Revolutionaries were working at Treasure
Isle Studio with Sonia Pottinger (see the classic Culture albums
of the period), and Sly was also spending some time at Joe Gibbs'
Studio with The Professionals.
Dunbar made two significant career choices in the mid-seventies.
The first was to solidify his rhythmic partnership and close association
with Robbie Shakespeare. The other was eventually focusing his
production attention on an old Waterhouse friend and singer named
Michael Rose. Sly actually began producing Michael Rose and his
brother Joseph as early as the mid-70s. Joseph Rose died in a
car crash in 1974, and the younger brother became more intent
on a musical career as a result. In 1977, the original line-up
of Black Uhuru (Garth Dennis, Don Carlos, and Duckie Simpson)
separated and Duckie Simpson joined forces with Rose and Jays'
singer Errol Nelson. That incarnation of Black Uhuru was produced
by Prince Jammy on the Love Crisis album with Santa Davis
playing drums on most of the cuts (while Sly and Robbie were on
tour with Peter Tosh).
In 1978, Puma Jones joined Black Uhuru in place of Errol Nelson
and the classic line-up had materialized. With Sly and Robbie
producing for their new Taxi label (Michael Rose had actually
been its first artist and founder), Black Uhuru recorded "Shine
Eye Gal," "Plastic Smile," "Guess Who's Coming
To Dinner," "Abortion" and "General Penetentiary"
-- all of which became hits in Jamaica in 1979. Those cuts and
several others were collected on the Taxi and D-Roy labels as
Showcase. The album was picked up by Virgin Frontline for
European distribution, putting Black Uhuru on an international
trajectory. The Dynamic Duo then produced Sensimilla, which
was released by Island Records in 1980. The album is often considered
among reggae's all-time greatest studio work. Over the next three
years, Island would release four Taxi produced Black Uhuru albums
- Red, Tear It Up, Chill Out, The Dub
Factor, and Anthem. The group was at the top of the
international reggae scene when Michael Rose left to become a
farmer in 1985. Though Black Uhuru continued under the leadership
of singer Junior Reid and Duckie Simpson, it will always be ultimately
considered the principle creative product of Michael Rose, Sly
Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare.
Sly explains that the ultra-progressive sound of vintage Black
Uhuru came from translating his observations of the three singers
into music. "It was just looking at the artist and just playing.
If you're around people and you see what they need, you just get
out that music. Like sometime you're seeing people moving. We
didn't know what it was, we [were] just playing what we felt.
We didn't know what was going to happen. We just go for it."
The Sly and Robbie/Black Uhuru sound became known in Jamaica as
the "cutting edge," but Rolling Stones guitarist Keith
Richards' appearance on "Shine Eye Gal" revealed the
group's early rock interests. "If you listen to the drumming
in Black Uhuru, and if you go back and listen to some of the reggae
[of the period], it's not the same thing -- it's different,"
says Dunbar. "I'm playing R&B or a heavy metal pattern
kind of drumming. I wasn't playing the one drop. So what I did
to the drum was give it more power . . . really open the snare
and really bang on it, so this is where the whole 'cutting edge'
come from . . . That's what helped it to break [internationally]
faster, cause people could really relate to the beat when they
heard it."
The success of Black Uhuru obviously owes a debt to the rhythmic
styling and direction of Sly and Robbie, and Sly doesn't hesitate
when asked about defining moments of creativity in his playing
with the group. "'The World Is Africa.' It was supposed to
be like a four bar [bridge]. When you're playing live everybody
can look at everybody and they look at me to give them the roll.
So me pick up and continue playing for another four bars and it
really swing. Every reggae drummer is like four bars [and] solo.
Me like 'no mon, get creative.' So it would be like a fever kind
of groove."
Sly attributes his desire to break new ground to the sheer amount
of time he spent working on reggae rhythm tracks. "If you're
a drummer, and you come in every day and play kick . . . drop.
And you play that for a year, don't tell me the next year you
want to play the same thing. You want to improvise and make it
better. You always stand a chance to play something creative.
[When] you deal with beats, you realize early on that the drum
is where the whole thing is, cause when the drum is there, everything
will lay around it."
Michael Rose, who has worked with Sly for well over twenty years
on some of reggae's greatest tracks, unreservedly calls Sly a
genius. "Sly come a long long way and up to now he still
holds it. Genius, man -- genius at work. Him know when fe change
the sound, cause when him change the sound, everything change,
[and] when the sound change, no matter what, he is always there."
Thanks to Ernie Smith for the trip to
the Mixing Lab and the introduction to Sly Dunbar. For more reading
on Sly Dunbar, look for Ray Hurford's informative article published
in More Axe, Black Star, 1987.
The full transcript of my interviews with Sly Dunbar and Michael
Rose appear in 400 Years issue
three.
Copyright 1996 Carter Van Pelt
