With drummer Sly Dunbar at the helm, the Taxi Gang created a lot of magic at Mixing Lab studios in Kingston during the 1990s. Their greatest success came with Tease Me, an album by Chaka Demus and Pliers which produced six songs that entered the British National Chart.
Released by Island Records subsidiary Mango Records in July 1993, Tease Me (also known as All She Wrote) turns 30 this year. On April 29, Chaka Demus and Pliers marked the milestone with a headline appearance at ‘Murder She Wrote’, a show by Coveside Concerts at Plantation Cove in St Ann parish.
Richie Spice, Tanya Stephens, and Leroy Sibbles also performed.
Dunbar said he got ideas for new projects while spending a lot of time in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s. On his return to Jamaica, he discussed them with Trish Farrell, then head of Island Records in Jamaica.
It led to an unlikely partnership with Chaka Demus and Pliers, whose solo careers were on the wane at the time. For Dunbar, a Grammy winner who has played on and produced countless hit songs, Tease Me is high on his list of accomplishments.
“Is a special kinda album, with a singer an’ a deejay. We wanted to make a different kinda deejay record, something dat would last forever,” Dunbar told worldareggae.com
“We” were the Taxi Gang principals — bassist Robbie Shakespeare, Dunbar’s longtime production partner; guitarist Lloyd Willis and keyboardist Robbie Lyn.
Murder She Wrote, the first song they produced by Chaka Demus and Pliers to be released, was a monster hit in Jamaica in 1992. It set the pace for a bumper in 1993.
Recorded on the exotic Santa Barbara ‘riddim ‘, Murder She Wrote made the Top 40 of the British National Chart. So did Tease Me, Gal Wine, Twist And Shout (with Jack Radics), She Don’t Let Nobody and I Wanna Be Your Man.
It was the first and remains the only time, that any act scored as many songs on the UK chart from one album. Dunbar, who toured that country with Chaka Demus and Pliers and the Taxi Gang in support of Tease Me, was overwhelmed by the response.
“As a black group, it was really big and surprises me to this day. I guess is jus’ di Father works,” he said.
The Taxi Gang also produced For Every Kinda People, Chaka Demus and Pliers’ 1996 follow-up to Tease Me.
By Howard Campbell
