Tribute to Ebo Taylor (Ghana)

TRIBUTE TO EBO TAYLOR

Born Deroy Taylor in Ghana’s Cape Coast on 6 January 1936, he started playing piano at the age of six.^[3]

Taylor was a pivotal figure on the Ghanaian music scene for over six decades. In the late 1950s he was active in the influential highlife bands the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band. In 1962, Taylor took his group, the Black Star Highlife Band, to London where he collaborated with Nigerian afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti as well as other African musicians.^[4][5]

Returning to Ghana, Taylor worked as a producer for musicians such as Pat Thomas and C. K. Mann—as well as pursued solo projects—combining traditional Ghanaian material with afrobeat, jazz, and funkrhythms to create his own recognizable sound in the 1970s. He was the inhouse guitar player, arranger, and producer for Essiebons, founded by Dick Essilfie Bondzie.^[6]

In 1992, Ghetto Concept included his afrobeats in their music.

Taylor's work became popular internationally with hip-hop producers in the 21st century.^[7] In 2008, Taylor met the Berlin-based musicians of the Afrobeat Academy band, including saxophonist Ben Abarbanel-Wolff, which led to the release of the album Love and Death with Strut Records (his first internationally distributed album) in 2010.^[1][8][9] The same year, Usher used a sample from Taylor's song "Heaven" for "She Don't Know" with Ludacris.^[10] His songs were also sampled by artists including the Black Eyed Peas, Kelly Rowland, Jidenna, Vic Mensa and Rapsody.^[2][11]

He collaborated again with the Afrobeat Academy in Berlin in 2011. In 2017, his Ghanaian funk anthem "Come Along," was popular among DJs.^[6]

The success of Love and Death prompted Strut to issue the retrospective Life Stories: Highlife & Afrobeat Classics 1973–1980, in the spring of 2011. A year later, in 2012, a third Strut album, Appia Kwa Bridge, was released. Appia Kwa Bridge showed that at 77 years old, Taylor remained creative, mixing traditional Fante songs and chants with children's rhymes and personal stories into his own sharp vision of highlife.^[12]

He performed at the 2015 edition of the annual Stanbic Jazz Festival along with Earl Klugh, Ackah Blay and others.^[13]

In 2025, at the age of 89, Taylor received mainstream media attention in the United States, after being "unheralded" since the 1960s, as a "musical pioneer."^[14]

Taylor died on 7 February 2026, at the age of 90.^[3][11][15]