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TAYLOR, EBO - PALAVER
ARTIST:
TITLE:
Palaver
LABEL:
CATNO:
BBE511ALP
STYLE:
FORMAT:
Vinyl record
DESCRIPTION:
Folk, World, & Country African LP - BBE Music unearth ‘Palaver’, a long-lost, previously unreleased 1980 album from Ghanaian guitarist and songwriter Ebo Taylor. If Fela Kuti was the king of Nigerian Afrobeat, then Ebo Taylor, 83 and still playing hard, is the king of Ghana Funky-Highlife. No doubt whatsoever. Much of Ebo’s beautiful 70s and 80s output has been reissued, as more and more Afro music lovers are being converted to his unique pan-West African sound. In 1980 while on a club tour of Nigeria with his regular touring band,
Ebo bumped into Chief Tabansi of Tabansi Records. They agreed that Taylor would record a one-album session to be released exclusively on Tabansi. Within a few days the deal was signed, the session completed, the tapes signed off, and Ebo and his band went on their way to complete their Nigerian tour. But for reasons that no-one (including Ebo) can now fully recall, the master tapes got shelved in a dusty backroom in Tabansi’s Onitsha HQ. Where they remained, undisturbed, unreleased, unplayed, for almost forty years. Last year, Peter Adarkwah of BBE Music signed off on a major multi-album reissue deal with Tabansi and its affiliated labels. ‘What about unissued material, if we find any?’ Joe Tabansi, Chief’s son and current administrator of the label, casually asked. Yes, replied Peter- but WHAT unissued material? Upon which, Joe produces these masters. The tapes are rushed to the redoubtable Carvery vinyl remastering and pressing plant in East London, and all at BBE soon realised that they had a masterpiece on their hands. All-new material, all Ebo’s own compositions, all recorded with Ebo’s crème-de-la-crème touring and recording players, including George Amissah. Mat Hammond, George Kennedy and George Abunuah among others. Here it is, for the first time, anywhere. Ebo Taylor’s Lost Nigeria Sessions.
Ebo bumped into Chief Tabansi of Tabansi Records. They agreed that Taylor would record a one-album session to be released exclusively on Tabansi. Within a few days the deal was signed, the session completed, the tapes signed off, and Ebo and his band went on their way to complete their Nigerian tour. But for reasons that no-one (including Ebo) can now fully recall, the master tapes got shelved in a dusty backroom in Tabansi’s Onitsha HQ. Where they remained, undisturbed, unreleased, unplayed, for almost forty years. Last year, Peter Adarkwah of BBE Music signed off on a major multi-album reissue deal with Tabansi and its affiliated labels. ‘What about unissued material, if we find any?’ Joe Tabansi, Chief’s son and current administrator of the label, casually asked. Yes, replied Peter- but WHAT unissued material? Upon which, Joe produces these masters. The tapes are rushed to the redoubtable Carvery vinyl remastering and pressing plant in East London, and all at BBE soon realised that they had a masterpiece on their hands. All-new material, all Ebo’s own compositions, all recorded with Ebo’s crème-de-la-crème touring and recording players, including George Amissah. Mat Hammond, George Kennedy and George Abunuah among others. Here it is, for the first time, anywhere. Ebo Taylor’s Lost Nigeria Sessions.
PRICE:
£18.49
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New
MEDIA:
New
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Last FM Information on Ebo Taylor
Please note the information is done on a artist keyword match and data is provided by LastFM.
Ebo Taylor (born Deroy Taylor on 7 January 1936 in Cape Coast, Ghana; died 7 February 2026) was a Ghanaian guitarist, composer, bandleader, record producer and arranger focusing on highlife and afrobeat music. Taylor was a vital figure on the Ghanaian music scene for over six decades and received a number of awards, including Life Time Achievement Award at the 2014 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2019 Highlife Music Awards, abd Music Legend of the year at the 2019 Ghana Business Awards.
In the late '50s Taylor was active in the influential highlife bands the Stargazers and the Broadway Dance Band, and in 1962 he took his own group, the Black Star Highlife Band, to London, which led to collaborations with Fela Kuti and other African musicians in Britain at the time.
Returning to Ghana, he worked as a producer, crafting recordings for Pat Thomas, C.K. Mann, and others, as well as exploring his own projects, combining traditional Ghanaian material with Afro-beat, jazz, and funk rhythms to create his own recognizable sound in the '70s.
Taylor's work became popular internationally with hip-hop producers in the 21st century. In 1992, Ghetto Concept included his afrobeats in their music. In 2010, Usher used a sample from Taylor's song "Heaven" for "She Don't Know" with Ludacris.
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).
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.
He collaborated with the Afrobeat Academy in Berlin in 2011. He performed at the 2015 edition of the annual Stanbic Jazz Festival along with Earl Klugh, Ackah Blay and others. In 2017, his Ghanaian funk anthem "Come Along," was popular among DJs.
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". Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
