Lowell Fillmore “Sly” Dunbar passed away on January 26, 2026. The full title of this article by Mark Savage (BBC News) is “Sly Dunbar, prolific legend of reggae, dies aged 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. [. . .]
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. [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn56300z220o
Also see https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/entertainment/20260126/iconic-drummer-sly-dunbar-has-died and https://la1ere.franceinfo.fr/martinique/sly-dunbar-batteur-mythique-de-reggae-est-decede-1665678.html
Lowell Fillmore “Sly” Dunbar passed away on January 26, 2026. The full title of this article by Mark Savage (BBC News) is “Sly Dunbar, prolific legend of reggae, dies aged 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
