Fatai Rolling Dollar a Guitarist. Singer and Exponent of the Native Thumb Piano (Agidigbo) was the Veteran of West African Folk Music and the greatest influence on West African Contemporary music, who in is his long career directly spawned and mentored some of the most successful musicians in West Africa's history such as Ebenezer Obey, King Sunny Ade, and Fela Kuti amongst others. His musical style is a fusion of Native agidigbo with broader Highlife and Latin themes. The Latin Influence being as a result of his birth/background in Lagos, with a large Immigrant Brazilian and Hispanic population in the mid 19th century -early 20th century. He later experimented with Afro-Funk and Afro-beat.


Rolling Dollar, whose real surname is Olagunjo, can thank his schoolmates for his stage name. He was always called on by them to roll a two-and-a-half shilling piece (a dollar) to choose sides for the football matches at school break. He began his musical career during the years of hard graft put in for the marines of the colonial powers in his native port city. Fatai worked the Palm Line that went down to Congo, Libreville, Luanda, and Port Noire. Everywhere he went he picked up different rhythms on the agidigbo and played it in exchange for Lucky Strike cigarettes.
His music break came in 1953 when teamed up with master guitarist J.O. Araba and tenor sax Ishola Willie Payne to play at the exclusive Island Club. Their Afro Skittle band adopted Ghanaian palm wine music to Yoruba highlife sounds, a fusion that deeply influenced up-and-coming artists Fela Kuti, Sunny Ade and Ebenezer Obey (whom he taught to play the guitar). In the early days of independence, the Afro Skittles recorded several 78-rpm vinyl songs for Philips, the most popular of which were "Ranka Dede" and "Ogba oya ya". Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.