By this time, the group also included Junior Braithwaite, Beverly Kelso, and Cherry Smith. Their first single, “Simmer Down,” went to the top of the Jamaican charts in January 1964. In 1963, Marley, Livingston, and McIntosh formed The Wailing Wailers. Although he didn’t fare well as a solo artist, Marley found some success joining forces with his friends. Local record producer Leslie Kong liked Marley’s vocals and had the teenager record a few singles, the first of which was “Judge Not,” released in 1962. He met another student of Higgs, Peter McIntosh (later Peter Tosh) who eventually played an important role in Marley’s career. Under the guidance of Joe Higgs, Marley worked on improving his singing abilities. Marley and Livingston devoted much of their time to music. Marley liked such artists as Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, and the Drifters. Sounds from the United States also drifted in over the radio and through jukeboxes. Trench Town had a number of successful local performers and was considered the Motown of Jamaica. He struggled in poverty, but he found inspiration in the music around him. Later Livingston’s father and Marley’s mother became involved, and they all lived together for a time in Kingston, according to Christopher John Farley’s Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley.Īrriving in the Jamaican capital in the late 1950s, Marley lived in Trench Town, one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Bunny inspired Marley to learn to play the guitar. Attending the same school, the two shared a love of music. Ann was Neville “Bunny” O’Riley Livingston. Ann Parish, in the rural village known as Nine Miles. Originally from East Sussex, England, Norval was largely absent from his son’s life, and Bob talked about him in scathing terms later on.īob spent his early years in St. They separated shortly after Bob’s birth. Marley’s mother, Cedella Malcolm (later Cedella Booker), a native of Jamaica, was only 18 when she married a much older white man, Norval Sinclair Marley, who worked as a plantation supervisor. Robert Nesta Marley-better known as Bob Marley-was born on February 6, 1945, in St. Ann Parish, Jamaica SPOUSE: Rita Marley (1966-1981) CHILDREN: Sharon, Cedella, Robert, Rohan, Karen, Stephanie, Julian, Ky-Mani, Ziggy, Damian, and Stephen ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius Early Life Quick FactsįULL NAME: Robert Nesta Marley BORN: FebruDIED: BIRTHPLACE: St. A father to 11 children, Marley died from cancer in May 1981 at age 36. Marley went on to sell more than 20 million records throughout his career, making him the first international superstar to emerge from the so-called developing world. The Wailers’ big break came in 1972 when the band landed a contract with Island Records. In 1963, Marley and his friends formed The Wailing Wailers, which eventually became Bob Marley & The Wailers. As firm as his association is with Jamaica, the music he made had a dialogic relationship with a variety of Black styles, including funk (“I Shot the Sheriff,” “No More Trouble”), soul (“No Woman, No Cry,” “Redemption Song”), and even disco (“Could You Be Loved,” “Exodus”)-reggae, you could say, was just his concentration.Įven as he settled into smoother, pop-oriented sounds (1978’s Kaya, 1980’s Uprising), he retained an urgency and sense of struggle that inspired generations of artists to recognize that music, while great for entertainment, can also be the delivery system for something bigger.Jamaican singer-songwriter Bob Marley helped introduce reggae music to the world and remains one of the genre’s most beloved artists, having sold more than 75 million records. And if his music sounded sweet and made you want to dance, it’s because, as his sometime publicist Vivien Goldman once put it, he knew that if he hooked you with the melody, you’d have to listen to what he had to say.īorn in 1945 in Nine Mile, a rural village about an hour and a half outside Kingston, Marley formed The Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in his late teens, thickening from cheerful R&B-based ska to the more rhythmically substantive sound of reggae. He may have been ambivalent about politics (he once said it was pretty much the same thing as church-a way to keep people ignorant), but it wasn’t because of their underlying possibilities it was the way the political system had been twisted by the tyranny and greed of people in power that troubled him. His music spoke to colonialism (“Small Axe”), poverty (“Them Belly Full ”), the necessity of achieving political agency (“Get Up, Stand Up”), and the challenge of exercising it (“Burnin’ and Lootin’”) with a righteousness and frustration that made him as much a figurehead to punk rock as to the reggae he helped export to the world. Given the image of him as a smiling, joint-smoking peacenik that has proliferated since his death in 1981, it’s easy to forget just how angry Bob Marley was.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |