Reggae singer/session keyboardist/producer Lloyd Charmers’s death in London a few days ago brings into sharp focus the steady passing of musicians from a generation that saw Jamaica become independent during their 20s. But it also sees the passing of one of the island nation’s premier producers of the dirty reggae song artform.

Charmers was born Lloyd Tyrell in 1946 in the Trench Town district of Kingston, Jamaica, and very little is documented of his early life. After getting his feet wet in Jamaica’s late-‘50s shuffle R&B scene, Charmers started his first group, the Charmers in 1962 with Roy Wilson, and after they split, he kept using the Charmers name for many of his subsequent records.

When The Charmers split, he joined Slim Smith and Jimmy Riley in The Uniques, a group that unleashed a crucial clutch of hits like “My Conversation”…
 

 
…and others which in true Jamaican style would be redone and revived as a “riddim” countless times to generate a bunch of other hits for the dancehalls, as represented by this mix…
 

 
Charmers set up his own Splash label in the early ‘70s, partly to satiate Jamaica’s understandable thirst for extremely groovin’ rocksteady covers of American and UK soul and rock hits, like Lulu’s “Oh Me Oh My,” the Spinners’ “It’s a Shame,” and even Bread’s “Everything I Own,” which launched legendary singer Ken Boothe into international stardom:
 

 
However, Charmers also cranked out a bunch of originals on Splash, including this stunning one, “Africa is Paradise,” which he recorded with B.B. Seaton as Conscious Minds…
 

 
But alongside such curiosities as his freaky reggae version of Les Crane’s 1972 pop recitation of the prose poem “Desiderata”…
 

 
…Charmers might be best known in his solo career for the sexually and scatalogically explicit tracks he released on the two volumes of his Censored album. Put out under the guise of Lloydie and The Lowbites, these cuts were as sensationally popular in both Jamaican and UK dancehalls as blue tunes usually are in any country. Censored saw Charmers clarified his stance contraception on “Birth Control”…
 

 
…which 2-Tone era skanksters The Specials reworked years later for their hit “Too Much Too Young”…
 

 
Charmers also crooned his obsession with ladyparts on tracks like the classic “Yum Yum Pussy”…
 

 
As one of a bevy of Jamaica’s mega-prolific producers, Charmers leaves a massive and difficult-to-document discography that included explicit tunes that delighted reggae fans worldwide. He will be missed.