Bob Marley

Robert Nesta Marley OM (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, he fused elements of reggae, ska and rocksteady and was renowned for his distinctive vocal and songwriting style. Marley increased the visibility of Jamaican music worldwide and became a global figure in popular culture. He became known as a Rastafarian icon, and he infused his music with a sense of spirituality. Marley is also considered a global symbol of Jamaican music and culture and identity and was controversial in his outspoken support for democratic social reforms. Marley also supported the legalisation of cannabis and advocated for Pan-Africanism.

Born in Nine Mile, Jamaica, Marley began his career in 1963, after forming the group Teenagers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, which became the Wailers. In 1965, they released their debut studio album, The Wailing Wailers, which included the single "One Love", a reworking of "People Get Ready". It was popular worldwide and established the group as a rising figure in reggae. The Wailers released 11 more studio albums, and after signing to Island Records, changed their name to Bob Marley and the Wailers. While initially employing louder instrumentation and singing, they began engaging in rhythmic-based song construction in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which coincided with Marley's conversion to Rastafari. Around this time, Marley relocated to London, and the group embodied their musical shift with the release of the album The Best of The Wailers (1971).

Bob Marley and the Wailers began to gain international attention after signing to Island and touring in support of the albums Catch a Fire and Burnin' (both 1973). Following their disbandment a year later, Marley carried on under the band's name. The album Natty Dread (1974) received positive reviews. In 1975, following the global popularity of Eric Clapton's version of Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff", Marley had his international breakthrough with his first hit outside Jamaica, a live version of "No Woman, No Cry", from the Live! album. This was followed by his breakthrough album in the United States, Rastaman Vibration (1976), which reached the Top 50 of the Billboard Soul Charts. A few months later, Marley survived an assassination attempt at his home in Jamaica, which was believed to be politically motivated. He permanently relocated to London, where he recorded the album Exodus, which incorporated elements of blues, soul, and British rock and had commercial and critical success. In 1977, Marley was diagnosed with acral lentiginous melanoma; he died in May 1981, shortly after baptism into the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Fans around the world expressed their grief, and he received a state funeral in Jamaica.

The greatest hits album Legend was released in 1984 and became the best-selling reggae album of all time. Marley also ranks as one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with estimated sales of more than 75 million records worldwide. He was posthumously honoured by Jamaica soon after his death with a designated Order of Merit by his nation. In 1994, Marley was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone ranked him No. 11 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. and No. 98 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. His other achievements include a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and induction into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.

Marley was born on 6 February 1945 at the farm of his maternal grandfather in Nine Mile, Saint Ann Parish, Colony of Jamaica, to Norval Sinclair Marley and Cedella Malcolm. Norval was a white Jamaican born in Clarendon Parish, and whose cousins claimed that the Marley surname had Syrian-Jewish origins. This is however not conclusive and speculative and was refuted by Marley's biographer. Norval went by the moniker "Captain", despite only having been a private in the British Army. At the time of his marriage to Cedella Malcolm, an Afro-Jamaican then 18 years old, Norval was supervising a subdivision of land for war veteran housing, and he was about 64 years old at the time of Bob Marley's birth. Norval, who provided little financial support for his wife and child and rarely saw them, died when Marley was 10 years old.

Some sources state that Marley's birth name was Nesta Robert Marley, with a story that when Marley was still a boy, a Jamaican passport official reversed his first and middle names because Nesta sounded like a girl's name.

Marley's maternal grandfather, Omariah, known as a Myal, was an early musical influence on Marley. Marley began to play music with Neville Livingston, later known as Bunny Wailer, while at Stepney Primary and Junior High School in Nine Mile, where they were childhood friends.

At age 12, Marley left Nine Mile with his mother and moved to the Trenchtown section of Kingston. Marley's mother and Thadeus Livingston, Bunny Wailer's father, had a daughter together named Claudette Pearl, who was a younger sister to both Bob and Bunny. With Marley and Livingston living together in the same house in Trenchtown, their musical explorations deepened to include the new ska music and the latest R&B from United States radio stations whose broadcasts reached Jamaica. Marley formed a vocal group with Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh. The line-up was known variously as the Teenagers, the Wailing Rudeboys, the Wailing Wailers, and finally just the Wailers. Joe Higgs, who was part of the successful vocal act Higgs and Wilson, lived nearby and encouraged Marley. Marley and the others did not play any instruments at this time and were more interested in being a vocal harmony group. Higgs helped them develop their vocal harmonies and began teaching Marley guitar.

Marley's mother later married Edward Booker, a civil servant from the United States, giving Marley two half-brothers: Richard and Anthony.

In February 1962, Marley recorded four songs, "Judge Not", "One Cup of Coffee", "Do You Still Love Me?" and "Terror", at Federal Studios for local music producer Leslie Kong. Three of the songs were released on Beverley's with "One Cup of Coffee" being released under the pseudonym Bobby Martell.

In 1963, Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, and Cherry Smith were called the Teenagers. They later changed the name to the Wailing Rudeboys, then to the Wailing Wailers, at which point they were discovered by record producer Coxsone Dodd, and finally to the Wailers. Their single "Simmer Down" for the Coxsone label became a Jamaican No. 1 in February 1964 selling an estimated 70,000 copies. The Wailers, now regularly recording for Studio One, found themselves working with established Jamaican musicians such as Ernest Ranglin (arranger "It Hurts To Be Alone"), the keyboardist Jackie Mittoo and saxophonist Roland Alphonso. By 1966, Braithwaite, Kelso, and Smith had left the Wailers, leaving the core trio of Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, and Peter Tosh.

In 1966, Marley married Rita Anderson, and moved near his mother's residence in Wilmington, Delaware, in the United States for a short time, during which he worked as a DuPont lab assistant, and on the assembly line and as a fork lift operator at a Chrysler plant in nearby Newark, under the alias Donald Marley.

Though raised Catholic, Marley became interested in Rastafari beliefs in the 1960s, when away from his mother's influence. After returning to Jamaica, Marley formally converted to Rastafari and began to grow dreadlocks.

After a financial disagreement with Dodd, Marley and his band teamed up with Lee "Scratch" Perry and his studio band, the Upsetters. Although the alliance lasted less than a year, they recorded what many consider the Wailers' finest work. Marley and Perry split after a dispute regarding the assignment of recording rights, but they would continue to work together.

1969 brought another change to Jamaican popular music, where the beat slowed down even further. The new beat was a slow, steady, ticking rhythm that was first heard on the Maytals song "Do the Reggay". Marley approached producer Leslie Kong, who was regarded as one of the major developers of the reggae sound. For the recordings, Kong combined the Wailers with his studio musicians called Beverley's All-Stars, which consisted of bassists Lloyd Parks and Jackie Jackson, drummer Paul Douglas, keyboardists Gladstone Anderson and Winston Wright, and guitarists Rad Bryan, Lynn Taitt, and Hux Brown. As David Moskowitz writes, "The tracks recorded in this session illustrated the Wailers' earliest efforts in the new reggae style. Gone are the ska trumpets and saxophones of the earlier songs, with instrumental breaks now being played by the electric guitar." The songs recorded would be released as the album The Best of The Wailers, including tracks "Soul Shakedown Party", "Stop That Train", "Caution", "Go Tell it on the Mountain", "Soon Come", "Can't You See", "Soul Captives", "Cheer Up", "Back Out" and "Do It Twice".

Between 1968 and 1972, Bob and Rita Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer re-cut some old tracks with JAD Records in Kingston and London in an attempt to commercialise the Wailers' sound. Bunny later asserted that those songs "should never be released on an album... they were just demos for record companies to listen to". In 1968, Bob and Rita visited songwriter Jimmy Norman at his apartment in the Bronx. Norman had written the extended lyrics for "Time Is on My Side" (recorded by Irma Thomas and the Rolling Stones) and had also written for Johnny Nash and Jimi Hendrix. A three-day jam session with Norman and others, including Norman's co-writer Al Pyfrom, resulted in a 24-minute tape of Marley performing several of his own and Norman-Pyfrom's compositions. According to reggae archivist Roger Steffens, this tape is rare in that it was influenced by pop rather than reggae, as part of an effort to break Marley into the US charts. According to an article in The New York Times, Marley experimented on the tape with various sounds, adopting a doo-wop style on "Stay With Me" and "the slow love song style of 1960s artists" on "Splish for My Splash". He lived in Ridgmount Gardens, Bloomsbury, during 1972.