If the defining sound of rock’n’roll is the electric guitar, the quintessential motif in reggae and dub music is the deep, throbbing frequency of the bass, and nobody captured its potency with greater artistry than Robbie Shakespeare.
Together with the drummer Sly Dunbar, he formed a powerhouse rhythm section that took Jamaican reggae into new and experimental sonic territory, utilising electronics and inventive studio effects. Sly and Robbie’s syncopations powered not only countless reggae and dub hits but made them in demand with A-list rock stars seeking to deepen their sound. Shakespeare’s claim that they had played on “200,000 songs” was a characteristic example of Jamaican “braff”, a patois expression for braggadocio, but the number certainly ran into several thousand.
Often referred to simply as the Riddim Twins, the duo appeared on albums by Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Madonna, the Rolling Stones, Sting and Sinéad O’Connor. Dylan was a particularly big fan and recruited the duo to play on a trio of albums in the 1980s. “Bob was one of my all-time favourite writers and singers from a long time,” Shakespeare said. “He worked the way we work. He’d just go in the studio and start playing and we’d just jump in.”
Among Jamaican musicians, Rolling Stone rated Shakespeare’s influence second only to Bob Marley and the Wailers, to whose international breakthrough album Catch A Fire he contributed. “No other musical entity in the post-Marley era has been so omnipresent in shaping the sound of Jamaica and bringing it to the world,” the magazine noted.
Yet he gave equal credit to his drumming partner. “Sly might start with a drum tone, and I say: ‘Boy, where the tempo at?’ He say, ‘Ay, nice one, just do your thing’ and then everything it falls in place,” Shakespeare said. Their personalities complemented each other too. While Dunbar, who survives him, was stick-thin, mild-mannered and articulate, the heftily built Shakespeare, who once served time in a Jamaican prison on a gun charge, was as deep as his bass lines and not to be trifled with. He was also a man of few words. During an interview with The Times in 1999, he not only left Dunbar to answer the questions but promptly fell asleep. “Man, yuh nuh dun yet?” he demanded when he awoke to hear his partner still talking.
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For many years Shakespeare and his wife, Marian, lived near Dunbar and his wife, Natasha. Latterly he divided his time between Jamaica and Florida, where he died.
Robert Warren Dale Shakespeare was born in 1953 in Kingston, Jamaica, the son of domestic workers. His older brother Lloyd sang with the future reggae star Max Romeo in a group called the Emotions, who rehearsed in the family’s yard. Shakespeare was soon playing an acoustic guitar before switching to bass under the influence of Aston “Family Man” Barrett, whose band the Hippy Boys also used the yard to rehearse. When Barrett left to join the Wailers, Shakespeare took his place in the Hippy Boys. He met Dunbar in a Kingston club in 1973. “We started playing and everyone was jumping. We locked into that groove immediately. Everyone said, ‘Yeah, that combination is wicked.’ It started from there.”
The pair played together in the Revolutionaries, the house band for Jamaica’s Channel One studio, and started their own production company and record label, Taxi. After appearing on landmark reggae albums by Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Gregory Isaacs, Culture and others, by the late 1970s they had joined the Jamaican reggae band Black Uhuru, who were signed to Island Records by Chris Blackwell.
Blackwell employed the duo to back Grace Jones on her 1981 hit Pull Up to the Bumper. A seminal recording that helped to launch a new style of electronic dance music, it turned Sly and Robbie overnight into the rhythm section every star wanted on their records.
In 1985 the Grammys introduced a best reggae recording category and they won the inaugural award for their production on Black Uhuru’s album Anthem. They won their second Grammy in 1999 for their album Friends.
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“No matter how much people hail Sly and Robbie as legends, we never feel like anything we get in life, we must get it,” Shakespeare said. “There have been a lot of sleepless nights and nuff time we go to bed hungry, so we remember these things and take stock.”
Robbie Shakespeare, bass player, was born on September 27, 1953. He died of complications arising from diabetes on December 8, 2021, aged 68