Steelpan legend Robbie Greenidge dies

The steel­pan fra­ter­ni­ty has been plunged in­to mourn­ing with news to­day of the pass­ing of icon­ic soloist, arranger and com­pos­er, Robert ‘Rob­bie’ Greenidge.

Greenidge, 76, who passed away in the Unit­ed States, had been ail­ing for a while af­ter suf­fer­ing a stroke.

He was in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed as a true am­bas­sador of the na­tion­al in­stru­ment, the steel­pan.

He was born in Suc­cess Vil­lage, Laven­tille to a pan-play­ing fam­i­ly. By the age of eight he was play­ing pan with The Savoys Steel Or­ches­tra un­der the tu­tor­ship of his un­cle and renowned pan­nist, Carl Greenidge. He lat­er joined Des­per­a­does un­der the lead­er­ship of Rudolph Charles and the di­rect mu­si­cal guid­ance of Em­manuel "Cor­beau Jack" Ri­ley.

Dur­ing the 1970s, he per­formed pan so­los on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion, ap­pear­ing on such top shows as the Jack­son Five Spe­cial, with King Er­ick­son in A Man Called Sloan, on Sat­ur­day Night Live and on The Sol­id Gold Show. He has al­so fea­tured on sound tracks for the movies "Champs" and "Broth­ers" and record­ed many jin­gles for tele­vi­sion.

One of the trea­sured high­lights of his ca­reer was an ap­pear­ance in the Mon­treux Jazz Fes­ti­val in Switzer­land where he played along­side such fa­mous jazz mu­si­cians as Stan Getz and Jim­my Smith.

His most suc­cess­ful un­der­tak­ing, Just The Two Of Us, was record­ed with Grover Wash­ing­ton and pro­duced by Ralph Mc­Don­ald.

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