Ebo Taylor is a Ghanaian guitarist, composer, bandleader, record producer, and arranger. His unique skills helped him carve his way through the African industry as he was a master at both highlife and afrobeat.

Ebo Taylor has been a pivotal figure on the Ghanaian music scene for over six decades. His skills made him one of the most important figures in the growth of highlife music. In the late 50s, he was active in the influential highlife bands, the Stargazers, and the Broadway Dance Band. In 1962, Taylor took his own group, the Black Star Highlife Band, to London. In London, Taylor collaborated with Nigerian afrobeat star Fela Kuti as well as other African musicians in Britain at the time.

On returning to Ghana, Taylor worked as a producer, producing for the likes of Pat Thomas, C.K. Mann, and others. Ebo also produced many solo projects, as he combined traditional Ghanaian music elements with afrobeat, jazz, and funk rhythms to create his own unique sound in the 70s.

Taylor's work became popular internationally with hip-hop producers in the 21st century, as they started sampling and interpolating his works. In 2008, Ebo 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). In 2009, Usher used a sample from Taylor's song Heaven for She Don’t Know.

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 and unique, as he mixed traditional Fante songs and chants into his own unique version of highlife.

He performed at the 2015 edition of the annual Stanbic Jazz Festival along with Earl Klugh, Ackah Blay and others.

His big break came when he formed his own highlife group called Black Star Highlife Band.

Did you know that the works of Ebo Taylor have been sampled by many hip-hop and RnB acts, including Usher?