Dodd also released the confusingly-titled Best of Bob Marley & The Wailers, issued on Studio One via Buddah Records in 1976 its uncommon track listing includes the first cuts of ‘Put It On’ and ‘Cry To Me,’ along with the pro-rudie rock steady ‘Jailhouse’ (which appears on the album twice, with alternate titles), as well as a bizarre ska take of ‘What’s New Pussycat.’ Hearbeat’s 2CD compilation, One Love At Studio One, culls the best of the era: along with the original cuts of ‘Mr Talkative’ and ‘There She Goes’ are impossibly rare singles like ‘Diamond Baby’ and previously unreleased outtakes of ‘It Hurts To Be Alone,’ ‘Wages Of Love,’ and a wild ska recasting of the Beatles’ ‘And I Love Her.’ Greatest Hits At Studio One, Destiny: Rare Ska Sides, Another Dance and Climb The Ladder are further Heartbeat variations on the same theme. Despite being remixed for foreign ears, Birth Of A Legend remains a prime introduction to the Wailers’ beginnings (though later Sony reissues reduced the album to one disc). This crucial release gathered 20 of the Wailers’ best-known ska works at Studio One, nicely capturing the way that Marley swiftly emerged as group leader there is also the first cut of Tosh’s ‘Maga Dog’ and Bunny’s ‘Who Feels It Knows It’, as well as the original ska version of ‘One Love,’ all of which deserve discovering if you don’t know them already. Since the ska era was dominated by seven-inch singles, Dodd never issued a Wailers album until far later, collecting the double LP Birth Of A Legend set for Calla Records in 1976. The singles they recorded in 1963-66 yielded several significant hits, including the anti-rude boy ‘Simmer Down,’ plus broken-hearted ska ballads such as ‘Lonesome Feeling’ and ‘I’m Still Waiting.’ Studio One founder Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd knew he was onto a good thing and went about cultivating the group, allowing Marley to live in a spare room, and acting as a surrogate father to him. When the Wailers were first brought to Studio One in 1963 by percussionist Alvin ‘Seeco’ Patterson, they were a chaotic five-piece harmony group led by Junior Braithwaite, with female backing singer Beverley Kelso alternating with Cherry Green. This guide seeks to relay every original studio album in the order in which they were recorded, with the exception of the Studio One and JAD material, which was issued on LP significantly later than when it was actually recorded. The Island era has two distinctive phases, with the departure of Tosh and Bunny Wailer, and the subsequent addition of the I-Threes circa late 1974, yielding readily-identifiable differences.ĭespite being truly voluminous, most of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ catalogue is superb, though endless repackaging makes album navigation difficult. In the early reggae phase, they cut somewhat overlooked material for Leslie Kong, followed by particularly wonderful work with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry in 1970-71, as well as a handful of influential self-produced singles on the group’s new label, Tuff Gong. In the rock steady era, the Wailers issued a few curious discs on their own Wail’n Soul’m label, before signing a song-writing and management contract with Danny Sims’ JAD organisation, for whom they began recording soul-influenced work, much of which was unfortunately shelved. Following two initial solo singles for Leslie Kong (one of which was mis-credited to Bobby Martell), there was the fertile ska phase at Studio One, where the Wailers slimmed from an unruly five-piece to yield the robust core of Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, Jamaica’s premier harmony group. Most fans are familiar with the classic Island albums of the 1970s, but Marley’s recording career stretches back to the early 1960s. Although his career was cut tragically short when he succumbed to cancer in 1981 at the terribly young age of 36, he remains the world’s best-known reggae performer and Jamaica’s most famous son, the universality of his message and the overarching appeal of his music cutting across boundaries of race, class, creed and culture. After a chance sighting by a former neighbour reunited him with his mother, against the odds, his superb skills as a singer-songwriter, and an astute marketing campaign by Island Records, turned him into the first ‘Third World Superstar’ and an international ambassador for the Rastafari movement. Born into poverty in a rural hamlet of colonial Jamaica, the product of a short-lived relationship between an aging white plantation overseer and a teenaged black peasant, Marley was abandoned by his father to grow wild in the ghettos of western Kingston, having been brought to the capital on the premise of getting an education. Following his essential Beginner’s Guide to the early days of dub, David Katz – renowned reggae historian, photographer – presents his album-by-album guide to Bob Marley and the Wailers’ studio output.īob Marley is undoubtedly one of the most iconic figures in the history of popular music.
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