Dead producer and bassist Robbie Shakespeare, who made Grace Jones great and grooved superstars like Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and Madonna.
Robbie Shakespeare is dead. Jamaica’s Minister of Culture Olivia Grange announced the message with the additionthat she was “shocked and sad”. Which is certainly not an understatement, after the bassist, as one half of the producer duo Sly & Robbie with drummer Sly Dunbar, has rewritten the history of pop music from Jamaica at least as much as his compatriot Bob Marley.
Shakespeare and Dunbar were part of the staff at Channel One Studio in the 1970s, where Jamaican pop music became reggae. They got their first world fame (and with such a symbiotic collaboration you only have to write in the obituary of one of the two) when they played with the singer Peter Tosh in 1978 in the opening act of Rolling Stones went on tour. They soon made themselves known as Taxi gear and independent producer duo.
His bass playing can only be described with the vocabulary of geology
The English producer Chris Blackwell knew them both of course. He had reggae with Marley and on his Iceland label Toots & the Maytals made a world phenomenon. When it became fashionable in the eighties to cross styles of music of all kinds, he saw the potential of using the two as a kick-start for pop music that lacked a little groove. The first breakthrough came when they produced the record “Nightclubbing” for model Grace Jones, who is also from Jamaica. What swelled out of the speakers under Jones’ icy voice had an irresistible effect that still works today. If you want to describe Shakespeare’s bass playing, you have to dig into the vocabulary of geology. While at the beginning of the eighties most bass players hammered their thumbs and palms on their strings to make their instruments sound as garish as possible, Shakespeare simply turned the upper frequency range out, creating an almost tectonic effect that first reached the abdomen and then the ears.
Together with Sly Dunbar’s ultra-relaxed drumming, he shaped such a trend in the groove of the eighties. The two were also the first to master and use the new drum machines. So it’s no wonder that the stars literally stood in line to buy this groove. Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Madonna, Britney Spears and Serge Gainsbourg were produced or remixed by the two. On the side they released reggae hits in their homeland. Shakespeare is said to have worked as bassist, producer, or both on more than 30,000 recordings.
Robbie Shakespeare died on Wednesday in Miami of complications after kidney surgery. He was 68 years old.