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Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley (February 6, 1945 – May 11, 1981) was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for the ska, rocksteady and reggae bands The Wailers (1964–1974) and Bob Marley & The Wailers (1974–1981). Marley remains the most widely known and revered performer of reggae music, and is credited for helping spread both Jamaican music and the Rastafari movement to a worldwide audience.
Marley's best known hits include "I Shot the Sheriff", "No Woman, No Cry", "Could You Be Loved", "Stir It Up", "Jamming", "Redemption Song", "One Love" and, together with The Wailers, "Three Little Birds",[encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica] as well as the posthumous releases "Buffalo Soldier" and "Iron Lion Zion". The compilation album, Legend (1984), released three years after his death, is reggae's best-selling album, being 10 times Platinum (Diamond) in the U.S., and selling 20 million copies worldwide.[title=Top Earners for 2004][title=Rolling in the money]
Early life and careerBob Marley was born in the small village of Nine Mile in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica as Nesta Robert Marley. A Jamaican passport official would later swap his first and middle names. His father, Norval Sinclair Marley, was a Jamaican of English descent, whose family came from Essex, England. Norval was a captain in the Royal Marines, as well as a plantation overseer, when he married Cedella Booker, an Afro-Jamaican then 18 years old
. Norval provided financial support for his wife and child, but seldom saw them, as he was often away on trips. In 1955, when Marley was 10 years old, his father died of a heart attack at age 60. Marley suffered racial prejudice as a youth because of his mixed racial origins, and faced questions about his own racial identity throughout his life. He once reflected:
"I don't have prejudice against meself. My father was a white and my mother was black. Them call me half-caste or whatever. Me don't dip on nobody's side. Me don't dip on the black man's side nor the white man's side. Me dip on God's side, the one who create me and cause me to come from black and white." Although Marley recognized his mixed ancestry, throughout his life and because of his beliefs, he self-identified as a black African. In songs such as "Black Survivor", "Babylon System", and "Blackman Redemption", Marley sings about the struggles of blacks and Africans against oppression from the West or "Babylon".
Marley became friends with Neville "Bunny" Livingston (later known as Bunny Wailer), with whom he started to play music. He left school at the age of 14 to make music with Joe Higgs, a local singer and devout Rastafari. It was at a jam session with Higgs and Livingston that Marley met Peter McIntosh (later known as Peter Tosh), who had similar musical ambitions.[first=Jason] In 1962, Marley recorded his first two singles, "Judge Not" and "One Cup of Coffee", with local music producer Leslie Kong. These songs, released on the Beverley's label under the pseudonym of Bobby Martell, attracted little attention. The songs were later re-released on the box set, Songs of Freedom, a posthumous collection of Marley's work.
Musical careerThe Wailerswikinews Vivien Goldman: An interview with Bob Marley's biographer
In 1963, Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, and Cherry Smith formed a ska and rocksteady group, calling themselves "The Teenagers". They later changed their 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". 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 at a Chrysler plant, under the alias Donald Marley.
Upon returning to Jamaica, Marley became a member of the Rastafari movement, and started to wear his trademark dreadlocks (see the religion section'' for more on Marley's religious views''). After a conflict 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 re
Bob Marley & The Wailers- 1976: Band of the Year (Rolling Stone)
- June 1978: Awarded the Peace Medal of the Third World from the United Nations
- February 1981: Awarded Jamaica's third highest honor, the Jamaican Order of Merit
- March 1994: Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
- 1999: Album of the Century for Exodus (Time)
- February 2001: A star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
- February 2001: Awarded Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award
- 2004: Rolling Stone ranked him #11 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time
- "One Love" named song of the millennium by BBC
- Voted as one of the greatest lyricists of all time by a BBC poll.
[title=Who is the greatest lyricist of all time] - 2006 A plaque dedicated to him by Nubian Jak community trust and supported by Her Majesty's Foreign Office.
Film adaptation(s)In February 2008, director Martin Scorsese announced his intention to produce a documentary movie on Marley. The film is set to be released on February 6, 2010, on what would have been Marley's 65th birthday. Recently, however, Scorsese dropped out due to scheduling problems. He is being replaced by Jonathan Demme.
In March 2008, The Weinstein Company announced its plans to produce a biopic of Bob Marley, based on the book No Woman No Cry: My Life With Bob Marley by Rita Marley. Rudy Langlais will produce the script by Lizzie Borden and Rita Marley will executive producer.
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