Steely & Clevie

The production partnership of keyboardist Wycliffe "Steely" Johnson and drummer Cleveland "Clevie" Browne rose to become the preeminent force among contemporary dancehall reggae producers, supplying their talents to releases by artists such as Shabba Ranks, Maxi Priest, and Gregory Isaacs. Steely drew initial notice through his role in Sugar Minott's Youth Promotion collective, supplying keyboards for the 1978 classic Ghetto-Ology prior to enlisting with the Roots Radics, the quintessential band of the early-'80s dancehall boom. Clevie, already a veteran of Studio One sessions and an alumnus of his family group the Browne Bunch, had begun probing drum machine capabilities that drew widespread scorn from other reggae drummers; the pair first worked together at Lee "Scratch" Perry's legendary Black Ark Studios in the late '70s, forging an immediate bond that produced repeated collaborations in the ensuing years.

By 1986 the duo had become the house band at King Jammy's studio, where their prior experiments with computer technology placed them well in advance of the broader turn toward electronic production. King Jammy's functioned as the epicenter of the reggae community throughout the latter half of the '80s, enabling Steely & Clevie to sustain a grueling output that included upwards of ten sides a week for performers such as Cocoa Tea and Dennis Brown. In 1988 they inaugurated their own imprint, Steely and Clevie, which quickly yielded major hits via singles by Foxy Brown, Tiger, Johnny P., and Dillinger while the duo also issued a run of their own "one rhythm" records, among them 1988's Busting Out, 1989's At the Top, and 1990's Lion Attack. Later sessions with Maxi Priest, Shabba Ranks, Aswad, Sean Paul, and Caron Wheeler expanded their mainstream visibility and cemented their command of the period. Steely passed away on September 1, 2009 due to heart failure.