Both Wycliffe 'Steely' Johnson and Cleveland 'Clevie' Browne started to play music from a young age. Clevie and his four brothers formed the Browne Bunch, the Jamaican equivalent to the Jackson 5. They scored a big hit in Jamaica with the Jackson 5 cover 'Good Thing Going'. It was Clevie's older brother Dalton, who met Steely at a Twelve Tribes of Israel dance and invited him over to the Browne fa
mily home. Soon Steely and Clevie discovered they both had the same taste in music. They did their first recording session together at Harry J's Studio when they recorded the Earl 16 song 'Man Making Plan'. A few months later, Augustus Pablo invited them into the studio again to play on some tracks for Hugh Mundell's classic 'Africa Must Be Free By 1983' album. After those sessions, the both of them went their own musical way for a while. Steely became part of the Black Roots Players and contributed to Sugar Minott's 'Ghetto-Ology', before he became a member of the Roots Radics Band, the premier session band of the rub-a-dub era and the backing band of Gregory Isaacs. Clevie became a member of The In-Crowd, toured with artists like Dennis Brown and Prince Lincoln and eventually became the drummer of The Studio One Band and toured the world with Freddie McGregor. He also played sessions for for Lee 'Scratch' Perry at Black Ark Studio and Clement 'Coxsone' Dodd at Studio One. When both were in Jamaica, Steely and Clevie always linked up, like on those sessions with Bob Marley at 56 Hope Road for 'Stiff Necked Fools' and 'Trench Town', which both ended up on Bob's posthumous 'Confrontation' album. Both Steely and Clevie always had a keen interest in technology and the latest developments in music equipment. Clevie acquired a Roland TR-606 drummachine followed by an Oberheim DX and Steely got hold of some synthesizers, with which they started to experiment building riddims at the Browne home studio. They also used their 'digital equipment' to build riddims for dubplates at the studio of Black Star Sound in August Town. They both thought they were way ahead of time with these new style riddims, but when producer Prince Jammy's released the 'Sleng Teng' riddim in 1985, they knew Jammy's was the man to check with their demo cassette. The 'Sleng Teng' riddim started the digital revolution in Jamaica. When Steely and Clevie checked Jammy's at his studio in Waterhouse and played their cassette, Jammy's told them: "This sounds alright, check me back this Sunday". He later admitted that he was blown away by what he heard, but didn't want to come across too eager. That Sunday, Steely and Clevie put riddims like 'Happy Times' and 'Father Jungle Rock' on tape and there was no looking back. They first played reggae riddims with their drummachines and synths, but experimenting with different types of drum patterns led to a new style of music, dancehall. The first riddim in this new dancehall pattern was Echo Minott's 'What The Hell The Police Can Do', but when Admiral Bailey voiced 'Pu**ny', the classic dancehall pattern was born. Besides being Jammy's inhouse band, Steely and Clevie also played on a lot of hits for producers like Winston Riley (Techniques), Hugh James (Red Man International) and Lloyd Dennis (Pick Out). In 1988, Steely and Clevie started their own label. The first single on the Steely & Clevie label was a combination by singer Leroy Gibbons and veteran toaster Dillinger called 'Bruk Camera'. A year later, they got their first Billboard Hit with Foxy Brown's cover of Tracy Chapman's 'Baby Can I Hold You Tonight (Sorry)' and they created another influential riddim, the 'Poco Man Jam' which became the template for reggaeton. Besides producing for their own label, they were still playing riddims for other producers like Bobby Dixon (Digital B), Augustus Clarke (Music Works), Mikey Bennett (Two Friends) and Donovan Germain (Penthouse). Steely and Clevie were the dominant force in Jamaican music from 1985 until far in the '90s. Their dominant position and their hit producing skills landed them production jobs for Jamaican super stars like Shabba Ranks, Super Cat, Mad Cobra and Tony Rebel, who all were signed to Sony Music in the early '90s. Also pop artists like Billy Ocean and Caron Wheeler hired their services as well as international record labels, who all wanted Steely and Clevie to remix songs of their artists. In the meantime, Steely and Clevie remained the hottest producers in Jamaica and kept creating different patterns like the 'Giggy' riddim and scoring big hits in the reggae charts both local and abroad with artists such as Beres Hammond, Junior Tucker, Garnet Silk and Baby Wayne. The list of hits and artists they worked with is endless as is the list of classic riddims they created.
