After his death aged 73, we look back at a selection of the hundreds of tracks the Sly and Robbie drummer had a hand in making
It isn’t Sly Dunbar’s most spectacular performance as a drummer – although his playing is right in the pocket: listen to the lightness of his touch on the cymbals and the tightness of his occasional fills – but as recording debuts go, appearing on an early 70s reggae classic in your teens, a single that furthermore went to No 1 in the UK and sold 300,000 copies despite British radio’s disinclination to play it, is quite the impressive way to open your account.
The Mighty Diamonds’ debut album Right Time effectively made Sly and Robbie’s name, helping to popularise the new “rockers” rhythm in reggae. It’s all great, but if you want to see how impactful Dunbar’s playing was on the sound, head straight to the title track. The beat he plays is complex, a world away from the “one-drop” rhythm that had predominated in reggae: so complex, in fact, that Dunbar claimed other drummers initially refused to believe he’d actually played it, assuming some kind of studio trickery was involved. “Then everybody started trying for that style,” he added, “and it soon become established.”
