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Robert Nesta Marley was born on February 6, 1945 in a small village called
Nine Miles in the parish of St. Ann, JAMAICA; his mother was an eighteen-year-old
black girl called Cedella Booker while his father was Captain Norval Marley,
a 50-year-old white quartermaster attached to the British West Indian
Regiment. When Bob Marley was barely into his teens, he moved to Kingston
where he began his astonishing music career.
In 1962 Marley linked up with Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston --a.k.a.
Bunny Wailer-- to form the Ska Reggae trio The Wailing Wailers and two
years later the group scored their first Jamaican #1 hit single with "Simmer
Down"; they disbanded in 1966 and before Marley moved to Delaware
in the U.S. he married a young girl called Rita Anderson; that October
Marley, after eight months in America, returned to Jamaica, he joined
up with Livingston and Tosh to re-form the group, now known as The Wailers.
In 1970 bass player Aston 'Family Man' Barrett and his brother, drummer
Carlton Barrett, joined The Wailers and the band issued its first album
credited to Bob Marley & The Wailers, "Soul Rebels", it
was also the band's first full-length collaboration with producer Lee
Perry, for whom they had already recorded a string of fairly successful
singles; a year later Marley signed to the revolutionary Island Records,
by the spring of 1972 the entire Wailers were in London, ostensibly promoting
their CBS debut single "Reggae On Broadway".
"Catch A Fire" appeared on the major label Island in spring
1973, although this album was not an immediate hit, it made a considerable
impact on the media and began the process of spreading of Reggae outside
Jamaica. That year the group also released their second album, "Burnin'",
an LP that included new versions of some of the band's older songs such
as "Duppy Conquerer" "Small Axe" and "Put In
On", together with tracks like "Get Up, Stand Up" and "I
Shot The Sheriff", the latter made famous by Eric
Clapton.
After Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh left to pursue their own solo careers,
Marley spent the better part of 1974 in the studio working on the sessions
that eventually provided "Natty Dread"; to fill the harmonic
void, the I-Three's, consisting of his wife Rita Marley and singers Marcia
Griffith and Judy Mowatt, were recruited. The following year the record
cracked the top 100 of the U.S. Pop Albums chart and the band went out
on the road to promote the release with an international tour, among the
concerts were two summer shows at the Lyceum Ballroom in London which,
even now, are remembered as highlights of the decade.
The shows were recorded and the subsequent concert album, "Live!",
together with the single "No Woman No Cry", both made the U.K.
charts.
In spring 1976 was released "Rastaman Vibration", it became
the band's breakthrough LP in the U.S. peaking at #8 on the Pop Albums
chart and the track "Roots, Rock, Reggae" was their first Pop
Singles chart entry at #51.
In December of the same year Marley was forced to leave Jamaica due to
an assassination attempt which left him wounded.
The group relocated to London where they recorded their next album, "Exodus";
released in June 1977, this album established Bob Marley & The Wailers
as one of the worldwide most interesting and original bands; it peaked
at #20 on the U.S. Pop Albums list and remained on the U.K. charts for
56 straight weeks spawning three sizable hit singles: "Jammin'",
"Waiting In Vain", "One Love / People Get Ready" and
the title-track. In 1998 Time magazine named "Exodus" the best
album of the 20th century.
The band released "Kaya" in early 1978, it debuted at #4 on
the British Albums chart backed by two hit singles, "Satisfy My Soul"
and "Is This Love"; "Kaya", synonymous with marijuana
in Rastafarian culture, was a moderate success in the U.S. reaching the
top 50 of the Pop Albums chart.
"Survival", Bob Marley's ninth album for Island Records, was
released in the summer of 1979, it didn't rise higher than #70 on the
U.S. Top 200 LPs & Tapes chart and was essentially an album of pan-African
solidarity.
The band's next effort, "Uprising", which arrived in May 1980,
hit every chart in Europe and its lead single, "Could You Be Loved",
was a massive worldwide smash; Bob Marley & The Wailers embarked on
a major European tour, breaking festival records throughout the continent;
the schedule included a 100,000-capacity crowd in Milan, the biggest show
in the band's history.
At the end of the European tour the grop went to America, Marley played
two shows at Madison Square Garden in New York but, immediately afterwards,
was taken seriously ill. Three years earlier, in London, the singer hurt
a toe while playing football, the wound had become cancerous and was belatedly
treated in Miami, yet it continued to fester. By 1980 the cancer, in its
most virulent form, had begun to spread through Marley's body. He fought
the disease for eight months, taking treatment in Germany. At the start
of May, Bob Marley left Europe for his Jamaican home, a journey he did
not complete. He died in a Miami hospital on Monday May 11, 1981, at age
36. Bob Marley is buried in a crypt at Nine Miles, near his birthplace,
with his Gibson guitar; his early death brought him nearly mythic status
in music history.
"Confrontation", a posthumous collection produced by Rita Marley,
was released in May 1983, two years after Bob Marley's death, it featured
unreleased material and singles recorded during his lifetime including
the well-known song "Buffalo Soldier". But it was the following
year that the best-selling greatest hits compilation, apltly titled "Legend",
conquered the world with its anti-violence message to the people; the
set has spent an unsurpassed 64 weeks and counting cumulative weeks atop
Billboard's Top Pop Catalogue Albums chart.
A tons of compilations were released over the years, "Songs Of Freedom",
originally issued as a limited-edition box set in October 1992 by Tuff
Gong/Island reached the #86 on The Billboard 200, it spanned Marley's
entire career from his first song, "Judge Not" recorded in 1962,
to a live version of "Redemption Song", recorded in 1980 in
Pittsburgh, his last concert; the 4-CD set featured rare, hit, re-mixed
and a handful of unreleased tracks including "Iron Lion Zion",
which peaked at #11 on The Modern Rock chart and shot to #5 on the British
chart.
"Africa Unite: The Singles Collection" celebrates Bob Marley's
60th Birthday with his first greatest hits package to include not only
his early sides and his Island Records hits but also a new recording and
two new remixes; along with 17 vintage tracks, the set, released in November
2005, spotlights "Slogans" which features Eric
Clapton on guitar and is the first new official Marley track released
in more than a decade.
Bob Marley & The Wailers biography is an exclusive of 100xr.com
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