Life and Times of Bob Marley

The first reggae performer to achieve a world-wide audience -- as well as being a significant cutural figure -- Robert Nesta Marley was born in Nine Miles, a small village located in the north Jamaican parish of St. Ann. His father Norval Marley was Jamaican-born but of British decent, having returned to the island following several decades of service in the British Army and married Cedella Booker, an 18-year old native Jamaican woman. Bob's father provided financial support for his family, but had a minimal presence in his son's life as a result of his frequent travelling; this support ended in 1955, however, when Norval died of a heart attack, forcing Bob and his mother to relocate from rural Nine Miles to the dangerous Trench Town slums of Kingston. It was here that he became active in music, inspired both by American R&B and the unique styles developing in Kingston.

At the age of 14 Marley left school to work as a welder's apprentice, while also pursuing his musical interests with friend Neville "Bunny" Livingston (later to be known as Bunny Wailer) and an older Rastafarian singer named Joe Higgs. Sessions with Higgs provided an introduction to fellow aspiring singer Winston "Peter" McIntosh (who subsequently shortened his name to just Peter Tosh), who would complete the collaborative trio within which Marley and Livingston would operate until the mid-1970s. In 1962 Marley recorded his first two singles Judge Not and One Cup of Coffee with producer/Beverly's Records founder Leslie Kong, and although neither song (the latter released under the Kong-invented pseudonym "Bobby Martell") received much attention, Marley remained fully committed to establishing himself as a performer. Marley, Livingston and McIntosh then assembled a six-piece ska group they first named The Teenagers and then The Wailing Rudeboys before settling on The Wailing Wailers in mid-1963.

Kong's questionable accounting practices ultimately brought an end to his association with the... [continues]

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