Bob Marley (1945 - 1981) was a Jamaican musician who popularized reggae music worldwide and became one of the most well-known exponents of the Rastafari religion. Marley was also a cultural revolutionary whose music expressed a fervent longing for political freedom, peace, and racial harmony.
Marley and his band, the Wailers, combined elements of ska, rock and roll, and other musical forms into their own version of reggae, a musical form that had its roots in the Jamaican ghetto of Trenchtown, where Marley spent his formative years. Marley's band had hit records in Jamaica for years before becoming more popular worldwide. The popularity of Marley's music and his message continued to expand around the globe for many years after his death, and many musicians of a number of pop genres credited Marley as a major influence on their songs.
Roots in Ska, Doo-Wop
Marley was born Robert Nesta Marley on February 6, 1945, in the Jamaican mountain village of Nine Mile, the child of a white British naval officer, Norman Marley, and a Jamaican woman, Cedellar Booker. His parents divorced when he was young, and in 1957 his mother moved with him to Trenchtown, an impoverished suburb of Kingston. Trenchtown was a housing project built after a 1951 hurricane had destroyed the area's squatter camps. The Rastafari religion combined with radical politics to foment a protest milieu in the ghetto, but those sentiments were unfocused and unorganized. The political repression and economic hardship that residents of Trenchtown experienced helped to inspire Marley's lyrics about the power of ordinary people standing up for their rights.
As a teenager in Trenchtown, Marley soon became friends with Peter Mcintosh, who as Peter Tosh later would inherit Marley's mantle of reggae superstar, and Neville Livingstone, whose stage name would be Bunny Wailer. They formed a band in 1963, a year after Marley auditioned solo for local Chinese-Jamaican businessman Lesley Kong and Kong produced a record, "Judge Not," on his Beverley label. During the same audition session Marley recorded two other numbers, "Terror" and "One Cup of Coffee," released with the name Bobby Martell, a pseudonym Kong had foisted on sixteen-year-old Marley. All three songs were recorded with a background beat of joyful, thumping ska - the latest popular music in Jamaica.
In the group, originally called the Teenagers, then the Wailing Rudeboys, and finally the Wailing Wailers and just the Wailers, Marley wrote music and lyrics and played guitar. But the young men, including a new member, Junior Braithwaite, took turns as vocalists. Their earliest ska recordings mingled a Jamaican proto-reggae style called mento with New Orleans blues.
Rude Boys and Rastafarianism
Record producer Clement Dodd took the group under his wing after it split with Kong. The band originally recorded two songs at Dodd's studio in 1963, "I'm Still Waiting" and "It Hurts to Be Alone." The latter was a hit, but the lead vocalist on it was Braithwaite, who had left Jamaica with his family for Chicago. Dodd insisted that Marley become the group's lead vocalist. Their next single, "Simmer Down," was released on Christmas Day 1963 and rose quickly to the top of the charts in Jamaica. It was recorded with the backing of a group of studio musicians that Dodd had brought in, including jazz trombonist Don Drummond. The song expressed Marley's warning to his fellow "rude boys" not to bring the law down on themselves, while at the same time replying to a letter from his mother, who was in the United States and was expressing concern that her son was falling in with the wrong kind of friends.
Since Marley's mother had left Jamaica to find work, Marley had no home of his own and stayed with friends. Dodd took Marley under his wing, becoming something of a substitute father figure. In exchange for letting Marley live in a back room at the recording studio, Dodd gave Marley several assignments: one was coaching a vocal group called the Soulettes. One of the trio was Rita Anderson, whom Marley would marry in 1966. A day after the wedding, Marley moved to Wilmington, Delaware, to live with his mother, who had moved there a year earlier.
The Wailers recorded several other records for Dodd's Coxsone label, including rebel anthems "Rude Boy," "Rule Dem Rudie," and "Jailhouse." At this point, Marley's music reflected his membership in the subculture of "rude boys," rebellious ghetto youth who frequently clashed with authorities. In 1965, however, Marley recorded an antidote to such militant anthems with "One Love," a song that distilled Rastafarian teachings and called for unity, peace, and love. These would be recurring themes throughout Marley's career: taking to the streets in strong protest against injustice tempered by a philosophy of non-violence and racial unity.
When Marley returned to Jamaica after his first stint in Wilmington, he and the Wailers signed with manager Danny Sims, an American living in Jamaica, and they recorded 80 songs for him between 1966 and 1972. Sims tried to steer Marley away from writing songs influenced by the Rastafari religion. Sims wanted the Wailers to reach the American market with a less radical message, like other reggae musicians he managed, including Jimmy Cliff and Johnny Nash, who made the upbeat U.S. hit record, "I Can See Clearly Now."
Stardom
After some time living back in Trenchtown and recording for Sims, mainly in the genre known as rock steady, Marley returned to Delaware to work on the assembly line. His early career was marked by interruptions and detours because he could not earn enough money to make a living and the band often battled for creative and financial control with record producers and companies. Marley soon fled back to Kingston after receiving a notice he had been drafted to fight in Vietnam.
Upon his return, Marley sought the advice of Rastafarian elder Mortimer Planner and decided to claim his musical independence. He was tired of compromising his message for other producers and did not like the way Sims had been toning down his philosophy to maximize commercial appeal. Marley opened a record shop and started a label, both called Wail 'N' Soul 'M,' named after the Wailers and the Soulettes, the group of singers that Rita Marley belonged to. After releasing a few singles, the venture folded.
In 1970, after meeting record producer Lee Perry, Marley and the Wailers - Tosh, Wailer, and studio drummer Carly Barrett - began experimenting with reggae, a musical style that was first popularized in a 1968 song by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay." The Wailers' version of reggae included an upfront bass line and the "one drop" beat played by a rhythm guitar. Perry was a major influence on the sound, persuading the Wailers to abandon doo-wop and dive deep into psychedelic reggae, borrowing heavily from American musicians Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone.
Marley's first authentically reggae songs drew on Caribbean myths, ghetto scenes, Old Testament verses, and radical sentiments. The Wailers had a series of Jamaican hits but did not burst on the international scene until they went to London and signed with Chris Blackwell's new Island Records. Their first recording for Island was Catch a Fire, the album that propelled Marley and the Wailers to global stardom. Their second album, Burnin', included the popular tracks "Get Up Stand Up" and "I Shot the Sheriff." Eric Clapton's cover of the latter song was a worldwide hit. The Wailers also recorded the influential album Natty Dread.
Just as the band's work was finally receiving increasing worldwide recognition, Tosh and Wailer left the group to pursue solo careers. In 1975 the group was rechristened Bob Marley and the Wailers, even though the original Wailers had left and had been replaced with backup from members of the former I-Threes, another vocal trio that included Rita Marley.
Rastafari Prophet
Marley's influence on music was monumental. Reggae captured the emerging, youthful, rebellious, and confident pulse of the Third World, but its infectious beat also captured the attention of youth in the United States and Europe. The dreadlocks Marley wore also became popular with young people in many countries, standing as a cultural symbol of defiance. But Marley's legacy went far beyond his music to include
