Robbie Lyn playing the Hammond B3 keyboard during sessions for the Jackie Mittoo tribute album at the Tuff Gong studios in June. (Photo: Garfield Robinson)

Robbie Lyn is one of those ubiquitous names in the musician credit section of reggae albums, but most can never place his face as they would saxophonist Dean Fraser or the drum and bass team of Sly and Robbie. But he has been just as prolific.

The 52 year-old keyboardist has played on countless hit songs since he strolled into the vaunted studios of Studio One in the summer of 1968, shortly after leaving St George's College. He did an 18-month stint at Studio One and while there he played on hit records such as Ken Boothe's Without Love, The Heptones' Sweet Talking and Bo Peep, Burning Spear's first record.

In the 1970s, Lyn doubled with the In Crowd and Now Generation bands. With the latter, his resume became even more impressive as they were the backing unit for the Federal Records vocal duo of Ernie Smith and Pluto Shervington. Lyn's work can be heard on Smith's classic Life is Just For Living and Duppy Gunman and Shervington's Ram Goat Liver.

More challenging work came Lyn's way in the late 1970s when he became a member of Peter Tosh's Word, Sound and Power band. He played on four albums for the "Stepping Razor" with some of his most outstanding runs coming on the disco-ish Buckingham Palace.

Lyn was a member of Sly and Robbie's Taxi Gang which produced a number of hits by The Tamlins, Jimmy Riley and Black Uhuru at the close of the 1970s. The "Riddim Twins'" also utilised his skill on albums by Ini Kamoze and Chaka Demus and Pliers, so too Freddie McGregor for his smash hit, Just Don't Want to Be Lonely.

The unassuming Lyn is largely self-taught; he grew up around music as his mother was also a pianist who played the cocktail circuit. Initially, he preferred the guitar but because that seemed to be the instrument of choice for most young musicians in the 1960s, he switched to tinkling the ivories.

Lyn recently completed work on a Jackie Mittoo tribute album, produced by Fraser. He has begun work on his own solo project which he says is a collection of rocksteady and Rhythm And Blues standards, and originals.

He recently stepped away from the keys to talk music with this column.

Howard Campbell: Who did you start listening to?

Robbie Lyn: I was into the Stax era, musicians like Booker T and The MGs. I was a Otis Redding fan and used to love the Motown sound, but I really listened to Booker T because the organ sound was the primary instrument. I admired Mittoo from a local aspect, apart from what he played he did a lot of great arrangements, a lot of the bass lines people think were done by bass players were actually designed by Mittoo.

HC: Was it special working on the Jackie Mittoo project?

RL: Yes, it was, I got to play some songs that in my early band days they had to be on the list. I really enjoyed that week because I got to work with people like (keyboardists) Ansell Collins and Harold Butler who I used to work with back at Channel One and Federal in the 1970s.

HC: What's the name of the brown keyboard you played on some of the songs?

RL: That's the Hammond B3. Jackie used that on most of the songs he did at Studio One.

HC: Did Tosh use a lot of keyboards?

RL: He ended up using a lot of keyboards, synthesizers weren't a big part of the music back then. But we started using a thing called the clavinet which was popularised by Stevie Wonder on the song Superstition; it sounds like a guitar but it's actually a keyboard.

Peter used to love to play that instrument and if you listen back to a lot of Peter's songs you'll hear at least four different types of keyboards.

HC: What are some of the better Tosh songs you think you played on?

RL: Live In a Glass House, Don't Look Back with Mick Jagger, Johnny B Goode. There was also Buckingham Palace.

HC: Buckingham Palace had a different sound, people said it sounded like disco.

RL: Yes, the music was evolving in America at the time. Robbie Shakespeare run the session that day and insisted that the song would have that sort of beat, Peter was singing like a reggae song but Robbie wanted something like the Rod Stewart song (Do Ya Think I'm Sexy). I played piano on it but what I remember most about that song was that there was a different vibe playing it live.

HC: When computers started taking over in the mid 1980s with the Sleng Teng, work picked up for you?

RL: By that time I had gotten a topclass Emulator 2 and I could do anything with that, play horns, drums. I also had a Yamaha DX7 which I used to play bass on the Beres (Hammond) tune One Dance and then She Loves Me Now. I did the drum programming on that and for much of the eighties I did a lot of production with me alone doing everything...drums, horns, bass, strings. Freddie's Just Don't Want to Be Lonely, that was me alone, Dean came in and put on some live horns.

HC: What type of instrument do you play now?

RL: A variety of synthesizers. Any sound you want now, organ, piano, the electronic stuff can do it. I have a Yamaha F80 which I have used a lot in recent years, I recently got another Yamaha, a Motif, which is very similar but the F80 is considered more friendly to a pianist because it has weighted keys like a grand piano.

HC: Who do you listen to now?

RL: Like Joe Sample from The Crusaders, some other young guys who have been around like Jeff Lauber. I'm into groups like Fourplay and people like (saxophonist) Boney James, smooth jazz stuff that uses a lot of horns and synthesizers.

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