Legendary reggae drummer and singer, Sly Dunbar dead at age 73

Reggae legend Sly Dunbar, who played with everyone from Bob Marley to The Rolling Stones, has died at the age of 73.

One of the genre’s most revered drummers, he played on tracks such as Bob Marley’s Punky Reggae Party and Dave and Ansell Collins’ classic, Double Barrel.

However, he was better known as half of the production team Sly & Robbie – who produced groundbreaking hits for everyone from Peter Tosh and Black Uhuru, to non-reggae acts like Bob Dylan, Grace Jones and Ian Dury.

Dunbar’s death was first reported by his wife, Thelma, who told the Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner she had found him unresponsive on Monday morning. The musician’s agent and publicist confirmed the news to the BBC.

Born Lowell Fillmore Dunbar in Kingston, Jamaica, he started out playing on tin cans, after watching Lloyd Knibbs and the Skatalites on television.

“I saw [Knibbs] playing and I thought, ‘I want to be a drummer’ because he’s the hardest worker in the band,” he said in a 1997 interview.

“He’s my idol! In some ways, I’m self-taught but I got a lot of help from other drummers by watching them play.”

In his teens, Dunbar met bassist Robbie Shakespeare and formed the rhythm section of the Revolutionaries, who became regular session musicians at the famed Channel One recording studio.

Their sound differed from the melody-rich music of Bob Marley, with a heavier emphasis on the beat – including the pioneering “rockers” rhythm, which introduced more syncopation and energy to the music.

They spent the 1970s working with major reggae acts like Gregory Isaacs, Dennis Brown and Barrington Levy, while touring the US with Peter Tosh.

According to legend, the duo lived on bread and water in that period, hoping to save enough money to start their own production company.

Taxi Records was duly founded in 1980, and nurtured a new generation of Jamaican artists such as Shaggy, Shabba Ranks, Skip Marley, Beenie Man and Red Dragon.

Around the same time, they provided the thunderous beats on Grace Jones’s hit 1981 album Nightclubbing, which opened the doors for them to work with some of rock and pop’s greatest – from Dylan and Joe Cocker, to singers like Marianne Faithfull, Madonna and Sinead O’Connor.

At home, they earned a reputation for updating the sound of reggae by incorporating more electronic instruments and textures.

Later on, they developed a bright and melodic take on dancehall with the duo Chaka Demus & Pliers, scoring hits with songs such as Tease Me and Murder She Wrote in the early 1990s.

At one point, Shakespeare (who died in 2021) estimated that he and Dunbar had taken part in more than 200,000 recordings, either their own or as backup musicians or producers for other artists.

“When you buy a reggae record, there’s a 90% chance the drummer is Sly Dunbar,” producer Brian Eno told the New Music New York festival in 1979.

“You get the impression that Sly Dunbar is chained to a studio seat somewhere in Jamaica, but in fact what happens is that his drum tracks are so interesting, they get used again and again.”

Dunbar’s wife said she had found him unresponsive in bed at around 07:00 on Monday, 26 January.