Ebo Taylor

Ebo Taylor, a Ghanaian guitarist, composer, arranger, bandleader, and producer, has remained an essential figure in African music across more than six decades. In the closing years of the 1950s and the opening stretch of the 1960s, he performed with the prominent highlife ensembles the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band while also serving as a producer for artists such as Pat Thomas and C.K. Mann. Throughout the 1970s his projects fused Ghanaian traditional elements with Afro-beat, jazz, and funk, a distinctive approach captured on Ebo Taylor & the Pelikans (1976) and Twer Nyame (1978). In the following decade he issued Conflict Nkru! alongside his Uhuru-Yenzu band and collaborated with Thomas on Sweeter Than Honey, Calypso "Mahuno" and High Lifes Celebration. Over the ensuing twenty years he continued as a sought-after producer, arranger, and composer for Thomas, Mann, Gyedu-Blay Ambolley, Kofi Yankson, and numerous additional performers. Taylor resumed live appearances in the early years of the twenty-first century once hip-hop producers began drawing on his recordings; Soundways Records subsequently issued the compilation Ghana Special. Strut Records brought out Love and Death in 2010, his debut album with international distribution, which paved the way for further reissues and fresh material including Yen Ara in 2018. That same label released the previously unheard Hitsville Re-Visited EP with Pat Thomas in 2019 along with the long-unissued 1980 album Palaver. At eighty-eight Taylor journeyed to the United States for the first time, joining Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad to record Ebo Taylor Jazz Is Dead 22, issued in January 2025.

Born in Ghana in 1936, Taylor absorbed the sound of wartime big bands during his childhood. His father encouraged him to master the family organ, after which he pursued guitar studies at school and embraced the rising highlife style. He soon formed his debut ensemble, the eight-piece Stargazers. In 1962 he left Ghana for London to attend the London Eric Gilder School of Music, where he explored jazz, funk, and soul with fellow student Fela Kuti and future Osibisa members Teddy Osei and Sol Amarfio. The group convened frequent jam sessions in Oxford Street jazz clubs, after which Fela would often accompany Taylor to his Willesden Junction flat to analyze recordings by Miles Davis and Charlie Parker for hours. While abroad, Taylor established the Black Star Highlife Band in 1961, introducing jazz-inflected horn charts that became one of his defining contributions to highlife.

Upon his return to Ghana, Taylor worked as an in-house arranger and producer for Essiebons and comparable labels, composing material, performing guitar on sessions, and overseeing recordings for leading figures including Mann and Thomas. From the 1970s into the 1980s he created a series of solo albums that blended traditional Ghanaian music with Afrobeat, jazz, soul, and funk on releases such as My Love and Music, Twer Nyame, and Me Kra Tsie. His single "Heaven" from this era ranks among the most celebrated Ghanaian Afrobeat recordings of the period. In 1980 he assembled Uhuru-Yenzu and delivered Conflict Nkru!, Nsamanfo: People's Highlife, Vol. 1, and Hitsville Re-Visited (the last jointly credited with Thomas). Following the 1984 album Pat Thomas & Ebo Taylor, Taylor ceased recording and touring to concentrate on production, arrangement, and composition for dozens of other artists.

Taylor encountered the Berlin Afrobeat Academy musicians, among them saxophonist Ben Abarbanel-Wolff, in 2008. The next year Usher incorporated "Heaven" into the hit "She Don’t Know" (feat. Ludacris). In 2010 Taylor partnered with the Berlin Afrobeat Academy on Love and Death for Strut Records, his initial internationally distributed album, featuring re-recordings of earlier highlife and Afrobeat successes. The project’s reception led Strut to release the retrospective Life Stories: Highlife & Afrobeat Classics 1973-1980 in spring 2011. A third Strut album, the introspective Appia Kwa Bridge, appeared in 2012 and demonstrated that, at seventy-six, Taylor remained vigorously inventive, integrating traditional Fante songs and chants with children’s rhymes and autobiographical reflections within his singular highlife framework. This recording initiated a global resurgence of interest in his work. Over the ensuing years additional early singles and tracks surfaced on various compilations, while the scarce Ebo Taylor & the Pelikans received a major reissue in 2015. His early Ghana funk anthem "Come Along" entered DJ rotations worldwide. In February 2016, at age eighty, he opened the MOGO Festival’s Nights with Music Greats, an appearance that preceded the deluxe reissue of his 1975 album My Love and Music on Mr. Bongo. In 2018 he issued Yen Ara, which reinterpreted multiple strands of Fante music through contemporary Ghanaian highlife and introduced fresh rhythmic approaches via horn-led pieces; at eighty-two he toured the world in support. The following year Mr. Bongo released Hitsville Re-Visited in May and BBE Music released Palaver in September, the latter comprising five previously unreleased tracks from a 1980 session.

During 2024, at eighty-eight, Taylor made his initial visit to the United States. In a Los Angeles studio he collaborated with producers and multi-instrumentalists Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge, who assembled ten additional musicians and singers to foster an environment reminiscent of Taylor’s 1970s and 1980s sessions. The resulting Ebo Taylor Jazz Is Dead 22 appeared on January 31, 2025.