Sly and Robbie drummer Sly Dunbar dies aged 73
The celebrated reggae drummer Sly Dunbar - one half of the rhythm section and production duo Sly and Robbie - has died aged 73.
Sly and Robbie drummer Sly Dunbar has died at the age of 73.
The revered reggae drummer, who was one half of rhythm section and production duo Sly and Robbie with the late bassist Robbie Shakespeare, passed away on Monday (26.01.26) morning - his wife Thelma revealed.
She told The Jamaica Gleaner newspaper: "About seven o'clock this morning I went to wake him up and he wasn't responding, I called the doctor and that was the news."
Thelma explained that Sly had been through a period of ill health, but that his death had still come as a surprise.
She said: "Yesterday was such a good day for him.
"He had friends come over to visit him and we all had such a good time. He ate well yesterday... sometimes he's into food. I knew he was sick... but I didn't know that he was this sick."
Born Lowell Fillmore Dunbar in Jamaica in 1952, Sly started playing music during his school days and met Shakespeare - who died aged 68 in 2021 - as teenagers when they formed the rhythm section of a group called the Revolutionaries.
The pair became Jamaica's most prolific and in-demand rhythm section and worked on hundreds of songs together, ranging from early reggae recordings with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer to later collaborations with mainstream artists such as Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and Grace Jones.
Sly and Robbie also released albums of their own and were seen as pivotal for pushing the reggae genre into the future with the adoption of electronic instruments.
During the 1990s, the pair produced the hits Tease Me and Murder She Wrote for Chaka Demus and Pliers before enjoying further success the following decade as producers of No Doubt tracks Hey Baby and Underneath It All.
Dunbar - who won two Grammy awards and was a 13-time nominee - once described his relationship with Shakespeare as "very harmonious".
He told The Independent back in 1997: "As well as being my colleague, Robbie is my closest friend. We have a very harmonious friendship. It feels like a bond. You adore it and thank God that it happened. It's even more than a marriage. We've never quarrelled. We just relax together. There's no ego.
"Robbie is the aggressive one; I'm the quiet one. Sometimes when people meet Robbie they're shy of him, even a little afraid, and they don't want to talk to him. But he's a sane, down-to-earth person really. When he gets aggressive, I can calm him down. I talk to him and say it doesn't make sense to be angry. He nearly always listens to me."
