Michigan & Smiley
musical duo
Michigan and Smiley are a Jamaican reggae/dancehall duo consisting of Papa Michigan (born Anthony Fairclough) and General Smiley (born Erroll Bennett). They rose to popularity during the first wave of dancehall music in the late 1970s.
Career
The duo of Michigan (Anthony Fairclough) and Smiley recorded at Clement "Coxsone" Dodd's Studio One in Jamaica, pressing their first number one hit single, "Rub a Dub Style", which featured their call and response style vocals, overdubbed on the Studio One riddim, "Vanity" (the instrumental alias given to Alton Ellis' Rocksteady classic, "I'm Just A Guy"). Their next single, perhaps a larger hit, "Nice Up the Dance" was a version of the quintessential Studio 1 rhythm, "Real Rock". These singles, with four other tracks, also versions of Studio One rhythms, were released as their first album, Nice Up the Dance. The names of these two singles were quickly incorporated into the lexicon of dancehall phraseology. Their call and response style was likewise influential on the future developments of the music, blending together straightforward singing styles and toasting. By 1982, they caught the attention of Henry "Junjo" Lawes, who recorded their biggest hit, "Diseases" over the "Mad Mad" riddim. This track was featured on their second LP, Downpression. They went on to cut an album for Channel One Records, Step by Step.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Michigan & Smiley” as musical duo. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as musical duo. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q864454. VIAF identifies the subject as 130325626. The Library of Congress control number is n92017530. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michigan & Smiley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.