Robbie Lyn
Artist. Rocksteady, reggae, roots, dancehall
- Active
- 1968-present
- Sunrise
- 1951, Kingston, Jamaica
- Also known as
- Robert Lyn, Robert Bernard Lyn, Robbie Lynn
Robbie Lyn is a keyboard player who has been one of the busiest session musicians in Jamaica from the end of rocksteady to the present, at Studio One, Channel One and the Black Ark and in Peter Tosh's Word, Sound and Power.
His mother played jazz piano in hotel trios and arranged lessons for him with Lennie Hibbert of Alpha Boys School, but he was mostly self-taught, and he names Booker T. Jones and Jackie Mittoo as his models. His first band was the In Crowd, which started as a church youth-club group, and his first session, a cigarette promotion with Fil Callender and Eric Frater, produced Ken Boothe's "Without Love." He then joined Sound Dimension at Studio One, where he played piano on the Gladiators' "Hello Carol" and on "Full Up," cut, as he remembered it, on a day when there was no singer to record.
Through the 1970s he was among the keyboard players on Lee Perry's Black Ark sessions and in the Revolutionaries, Channel One's house band, alongside Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare and Sticky Thompson. With Sly, Robbie, Mikey Chung and Skully Simms he was in the band on Tosh's celebrated live sets, and he has toured with Burning Spear, Dennis Brown and Third World. Producers of the 1990s, Fatis Burrell among them, used him to give dancehall riddims depth. His album Making Notes (2007) won the Reggae Academy Award for best instrumental album. He has called his old bandmate Mikey "Boo" Richards "the complete drummer."
Last updated October 23, 2026
Connections
- Sly Dunbar (bandmate)
- Robbie Shakespeare (bandmate)
- Peter Tosh (bandleader)
- The Revolutionaries (band)
- Mikey "Boo" Richards (bandmate)
- Sticky Thompson (bandmate)
- Mikey Chung (bandmate)
- Sound Dimension (band)
- Fil Callender (bandmate)
- Coxsone Dodd (session work)
- Lee "Scratch" Perry (session work)
- Joe Gibbs (session work)
- Dennis Brown (toured with)
- Fatis Burrell (session work)
- Ken Boothe (session work)
- Burning Spear (toured with)
- Third World (toured with)
- The Gladiators (session work)
- Studio One (session work)
- Channel One (session work)
- Black Ark (session work)
Notes
- Angus Taylor, "Interview: Robbie Lyn in Kingston (Part 1)," United Reggae, November 13, 2016, https://unitedreggae.com/articles/n2148/111316/interview-robbie-lyn-in-kingston-part-1. "Robbie Lyn," Wikipedia, accessed October 21, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Lyn.
- Taylor, "Interview: Robbie Lyn," quoting him: "we were all self-taught."
- Taylor, "Interview: Robbie Lyn."
- Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 326, 358. Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 157.
- Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 143. On the tours: "Robbie Lyn."
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 532.
- "Robbie Lyn," citing the Jamaica Gleaner, April 13, 2008. Howard Campbell, "Mikey Boo Passes," Jamaica Observer, November 29, 2021, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2021/11/29/mikey-boo-passes/.
