Ebo Taylor, who has died aged 90, was one of the great innovators of west African music, a Ghanaian guitarist, arranger and singer-songwriter who never received the fame he deserved outside Africa until late in life, by when he had become a much-sampled cult hero. It was only in 2010, when he was 74, that he released Love and Death, his first solo album to be given an international distribution.
Recorded with members of the Berlin-based Afrobeat academy, it included new versions of songs from earlier in his career that until now had been heard only on imports or compilations. And it showed how – like his far more celebrated Nigerian friend Fela Kuti – he had fused African and western styles to create a style of his own.
