Noel Davey

Noel Davey is the musician who, with the singer Wayne Smith, arranged the Sleng Teng rhythm — and the name most often missing from the story of it. Working on a Casio MT-40, the two built a first version from the keyboard's "rock" preset, considerably faster than the record that followed, and carried it to King Jammy in December 1984.

Jammy slowed it, matched it to Smith's singing key and added piano and clap tracks, and "Under Mi Sleng Teng" was released in early 1985 as the first fully computerised riddim in reggae. The standard telling credits Jammy alone, though the arrangement was the work of all three. His name is not settled. Beth Lesser, who interviewed the people involved and published Reggae Quarterly, gives it as Noel Dailey, and traces the spelling "Davey" to a single misstatement by Wayne Smith that her own magazine printed; other reference works say Davey.

Both spellings stand until a label credit, a registration or a payment record settles the question. A full-text search of the scanned book literature sharpens this: Lesser's King Jammy's is the only book that names him at all, and it says Dailey. No published book spells the Sleng Teng musician's name Davey.