Brothers in bass
REGGAE has spawned countless iconic bass lines. Errol “Flabba Holt” Carter is credited on many of them.
He was one of scores of musicians attending a thanksgiving service for legendary bassist Robbie Shakespeare at Webster Memorial Church in St Andrew, on Monday.
Holt, 72, spoke highly of Shakespeare whom he met in the late 1970s.
“Every bass man have a distinct sound and Robbie in a class by himself. Him style ah playing made him different so from ah man hear Robbie Shakespeare, him know ah Robbie dat. Even without [drummer] Sly [Dunbar], yuh know seh a Robbie dat,” Holt, told the Jamaica Observer.
Carter and Shakespeare collaborated on the Grammy-nominated project The Final Battle: Sly and Robbie vs Roots Radics, produced by Argentinian Hernan Sforzini.
“We were never in the studio at di same time. They do dem thing an’ we do our thing… Koffee won di Grammy wid Rapture dat year deh … January 2020,” said Holt, founder and leader of the Roots Radics Band.
Holt’s signature lines can be heard on songs by Gregory Isaacs ( Night Nurse, Border, Poor and Clean), Freddie McGregor ( Big Ship), David Isaacs ( Just Like The Sea), Edi Fitzroy ( Check For You Once), Eek-A-Mouse ( Wa Do Dem), Michael Prophet ( Gunman, Here Comes The Bride), and John Holt ( Police In Helicopter).
He also played all songs on Barrington Levy’s outstanding Englishman album, as well as most albums by Israel Vibration. Holt is the sole survivor of the original Roots Radics Band. Drummer Lincoln “Style” Scott, Wycliffe Johnson, guitarists Eric “Bingy Bunny” Lamont, and Noel “Sowell” Bailey, have all died.
Robbie Shakespeare, 68, died at his Florida home on December 8 of complications associated with his kidneys. He had a fruitful 45-year partnership with Dunbar.
Sly and Robbie won a Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album in 1999 for Friends.
Shakespeare played on some of reggae’s seminal songs including Revolution (Dennis Brown), Marcus Garvey (Burning Spear), Buckingham Palace (Peter Tosh), Concrete Jungle (The Wailers), and General Penitentiary (Black Uhuru).
None of those, however, are among Holt’s favourites.
“I love Robbie’s bass lines on Dennis Brown’s Have You Ever and Sitting and Watching, The Tamlins’ Baltimore, and Gregory Isaacs’s Oh What A Feeling,” he said.
