Early Days working with Sly and Robbie

Carlton W Livingston

The first time I started working with Sly and Robbie

It was the late 70s to early 80s in that time I was doing recordings with them for “Dynamite Records” with the production team of “Clive Jarrett and Beswick (Bebo) Phillips. Clive and Bebo was from the eastern part of Kingston (Dunkirk) Before I started to record for the Label I was singing on a sound system from around the area (Soul Express) of which I was part owner. I was singing in dances and I would see Clive and the Kirk crew in the dance having fun and enjoying the music. At that time I was recording for Sir D and Channel One. One day Clive approached me along with Lone Ranger about doing some songs. We said ok and me and Ranger started recording for the Label. Which produced hits like (Rumors) (Trodding) (Johnny meck u bad so) (Labor Ward).

Ranger and me ended up recording an album and many singles for the Label. It was in this period of recording songs with the label I had gotten to know Sly and Robbie. Robbie was a friend of Clive and Bebo for a while also Ranger I was like the outsider in that crew. I had known Robbie and his Brother from a while back. The Taxi gang was running a session on day at Channel one I was there just hanging out and Robbie said to me lets do some songs the first song was “Fools Fall in love” we were fooling around with some riddims when Solgie who was doing the engineering said to Robbie I should recorded a song that I had done a couple of weeks earlier for “GGs” records “Trodding” I resisted the notion of re-recording a song that I had recently done for another producer but Robbie insisted and when he started to play the bass line he was like that song and he shouted to Sly “Byia” meck we roll. And we did that song on one take.