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“He worked with people like Roland Alphonso,” Dodd concurs. “They helped him a lot.”

The Wailers’ early repertoire, as heard on Studio One reissues and compilations (through Wilson’s Heartbeat Records in the U.S.), reflected a great deal of the music in Jamaica at the time. For years, they did covers of American and English pop and R&B hits. “American music had an influence on us all the way through,” Dodd remarks. “That’s why, in the early days, we recorded ‘Teenager In Love’ and songs like that. Even then, they didn’t have the right knack or approach to writing original lyrics. As time went by, they picked up on the approach to writing songs and stuff like that.”

By this time, the band essentially lived in the studio. “They were at the back of the studio,” he recalls. “They occupied a three-bedroom flat back there, so near to the studio. It’s where the water tower is in back of the studio. I had a building behind it. Being that close to the studio all the time helps the artist. What really happened was the freedom that they had in the studio, hearing themselves over time, they got that confidence to say, ‘Well, this is working,’ and they stuck with it.”

While Dodd may have been the first producer to approach making records like that, he certainly wasn’t the last. For example, one floor of the late, lamented Power Station studio in New York City was basically living space, including beds for musicians and engineers, along with owner Tony Bongiovi’s own office/apartment—complete with waterbed and hot tub.

Still, the Wailers presented their own set of problems. Certainly one of the working names for the group, The Rudeboys, said a lot for both the nature of the group and their environment. “At one point the behavior of the youth,” he remembers, “we call it the rude boy era, it was hard to control them. That was during rock steady. It was a trip. What made it difficult with the Wailers was the company they kept. It was a rough kind. But being with the sound system from the early days, most of the people who came around had that kind of respect. It kept them from getting out of line.”

The Wailers also kept on getting better. While Tosh, initially, might have been the better musician, the early seeds of Marley as a pre-eminent songwriter were sown at Studio One. His very early song—and the Wailers’ first hit single—“Simmer Down” points to the direction he would take as a writer and performer in the future. It spoke directly to the audience about one of their chief concerns, what Dodd described as “getting out of line.” It also featured the group’s distinctive harmonies, a sound that would characterize Marley’s music, albeit with different voices.

Within a few years the Wailers changed in many ways. As Marley became more adept as a musician and songwriter, he took more control of the group. Over the course of the mid-’60s, the group dwindled from a sextet to a trio. “When they started,” says Dodd, “it was Junior the lead singer on ‘It Hurts to Be Alone’ and a couple of more songs, he was definitely the leader, because he had that beautiful, strong voice, that high-pitched tenor. Then he left Jamaica and joined his family abroad. By then I knew that Bob was the right person to really take his place and be the leader of the group.”

Beyond that, Marley had fallen in with another of Studio One’s young stars. Rita Anderson sang with another Studio One vocal group called the Soulettes. Dodd had assigned Marley to mentor them. “They met each other by my studios,” Dodd smiles fondly at the memory. “When I found out she was pregnant, being old-fashioned, I said, ‘You’ve really got to get married.’ I didn’t want the people outside to think I was a careless man, letting the kids get together and have kids. So I said they should get married. At that time, there was no other means of income for either of them. Their only means of income was by me. They weren’t working otherwise.”

Nor was it always an ideal marriage. While the union produced four children, unions between Marley and other women produced seven more offspring that Marley acknowledged. And while he recognized these children from outside his marriage with Rita, sometimes he would even deny being married. While both the Wailers and Rita had long ago left Studio One behind for other labels and producers, Dodd says that he was the one Rita would run to for help. “This is when he caught with the Rasta scene,” says Dodd. “He would say stuff like, ‘We’re not married, she’s just my little sister.’ Then Rita got scared, and she came by saying, ‘Would you have our marriage picture?’ I always had one, and I’d loan it to her and she could bring it by and straighten him out.”

One of Rita’s better qualities, it would seem, was being very organized, a trait she continues to display in maximizing the exposure of her late husband’s music as well as her own and her children’s. For example, when Bob could no longer find harmony with Tosh and Wailer, musically or otherwise, she put together the I-Threes, a backing harmony trio for the new Wailers that debuted with
Natty Dread
in 1974.

Although the Wailers had moved through the ministrations of Lee “Scratch” Perry and into the star-making machinery of Island Records, long after their days at Studio One and the watchful eyes of Coxsone Dodd, Dodd theorizes the battles that followed Marley’s death as a possible reaction to how much influence Rita had come to exert on the business of being Bob Marley. It may well have been sheer orneriness over these familial and professional power struggles, Dodd postulates, that left Marley to die intestate, even though he knew he had a lot of estate to leave and he certainly knew he was dying. “That was a shame and a pity,” Dodd says over the ensuing legalities that would stretch on over a decade after Marley’s death. “It was a needless thing. He knew he was going to die. It was more out of spite. Rita was becoming too strong at that point.”

What Marley’s Studio One output proves is that even before Rita, Bob Marley was strong musically. Songs like “One Love” date back to initial recordings on Studio One. Wilson believes that an even earlier song, the Wailers’ first Jamaican hit “Simmer Down,” informed every song Marley wrote thereafter. “When you hear stuff like ‘Simmer Down,’” he contends, “the message of ‘Simmer Down’ he went back to his whole career. He never deviated from his first hit. It really captured the feeling of Kingston in the 1960s, that undercurrent of violence. That was never far from any music he made after.”

Bob Marley: The Story Behind Chances Are
(
Source
: Atlantic Records Biography, October 1981)

I
T is the rare artist indeed who possesses the talent, vision and force to transcend barriers between nations and cultures. The late Bob Marley was such an artist. He was, of course, primarily responsible for bringing the Jamaican sound of reggae to the rest of the globe— both as a performer and as a writer. On that count alone, his place in musical/cultural history would have been assured. But Bob Marley was far more than reggae’s prime ambassador. He was a supremely gifted man, a brilliant musician and lyricist, a charismatic and sensual personality who used his art to convey a deeply felt message of love, peace, freedom and unity among all people. Dubbed a “soul rebel,” a “natural mystic,” Bob Marley remains one of the few truly original voices of this or any other age.

The final decade of Bob Marley’s life, from his signing to Island Records in the fall of 1972 to his death this past May, has been well-documented and analyzed. However, Marley’s musical career extended back for another full decade—a period that remains largely unexposed to the world.
Chances Are
is a new album of previously unreleased tracks by the king of reggae, and is being released in the U.S. by Cotillion Records through an agreement with WEA International. Recorded between 1968 and 1972, the eight songs on the album provide a fresh perspective on the
complete
music of Bob Marley. In order to understand how this music came to be recorded, it is necessary to place it in the context of Marley’s developing career.

Robert Nesta Marley was born in the countryside parish of St. Ann’s, Jamaica on February 6, 1945. His father, a white British naval officer, left before Bob was born. As a teenager, Marley began to work as a welder. One of his co-workers was Desmond Dekker, who soon began to achieve success as a singer and encouraged Bob to audition for the Beverleys label. With the help of Jimmy Cliff, Bob recorded his first song, “Judge Not,” at the age of 15. During the same period, Marley met Mortimo Planno, the presiding force in Jamaica’s Rastafarian movement. Planno became Bob’s life-long mentor, and Mar-ley’s music became infused with a highly spiritual quality that emanated from his Rastafarian beliefs.

In 1964, the Wailers came together in Trenchtown, the ghetto area of Kingston, Jamaica’s capital. The group initially consisted of Marley, Peter McIntosh (Tosh), Bunny Livingston (now Wailer), Junior Braithwaite, Beverly Kelso and Bob’s future wife, Rita. The Wailers began to record for producer Clement Dodd’s Studio One/Coxsone label and enjoyed a remarkable series of Caribbean chart-toppers: “Simmer Down” (their first hit, penned by Bob), “Put It On,” “Rude Boy,” “I’m Still Waiting,” “Rule Them Rudie” and many others.

Meanwhile, by 1966 the Wailers had been reduced to the trio that is now commonly referred to as “the original Wailers”: Marley, Tosh and Livingston (Rita would later rejoin the group as one of the I-Threes, Bob’s female backing singers). Unfortunately, as with most performers in the early years of reggae, the Wailers saw little monetary reward for their efforts. Frustrated, Marley left Jamaica for America, where he lived with his mother, Cedella Booker, in Delaware and worked in several factories.

Marley stayed in the U.S. less than a year, returning to Jamaica reportedly to avoid the military draft. The Wailers were reunited and began to record again. Then, in 1967, Bob met American soul singer Johnny Nash and his business partner Danny Sims. And it is here that the story behind
Chances Are
begins. Sims and Nash attended a Rasta festival in the Jamaican mountains with disc jockey Neville Willoughby who, according to Sims, “told Johnny and me that there was an artist that was so fantastic that he thought this kid had international potential and could be the biggest Caribbean act ever.” Sims and Nash were immediately intrigued and went with Willoughby to meet Mortimo Planno. As Marley’s mentor, Planno was supervising his career and screening all those who wished to meet with Bob. After first talking with Danny and Johnny, Planno then brought Marley to them.

“I listened to maybe fifty of Bob’s songs,” Sims recalls of his first meeting with Marley, “because he played one song after another after another. All he did when he came to visit me was play his guitar and sing.” Danny and Bob became close friends and, with the blessing of Mortimo Planno, Sims began to oversee his career as a combined publisher/manager/executive producer. This period of Bob’s life is discussed in the recently-published biography by Adrian Boot and Vivien Goldman: “At a time when Marley’s musical career had seemed very shaky after a series of rip-offs, it was Johnny Nash (Sims’s partner in the JAD record company) who stepped in, involving Bob in all manner of excitement . . . ”

So it was that Bob Marley (along with another young Jamaican musician, Paul Khouri) showed Johnny Nash how to play reggae music; and Nash in turn began to record some of Bob’s songs. In 1970, Marley traveled with Danny and Johnny to Sweden to work on a film project. The following year, the trio went to England, where both Marley and Nash were signed by CBS International via Sims and JAD Records. Among their activities in the U.K., Bob and Johnny did an unorthodox tour of secondary schools, combining duo and solo performances with question-and-answer sessions. Near the close of the tour, CBS released Nash’s version of the Marley song “Stir It Up,” which topped U.K. charts in 1972 and U.S. listings in 1973. Among the many other Marley tunes recorded by Nash were “Guava Jelly,” “Bend Down Low,” “Nice Time,” “Comma, Comma” and “You Poured Sugar On Me.” Thus, in an interesting turn of circumstances, it was Nash who gave Bob Marley his first non-Jamaican hits, at least as a writer; but it was ultimately Marley who, at first through the medium of Nash, gave reggae to the world.

Between 1968 and 1972, while working with Nash and Sims, Mar-ley recorded in the neighborhood of 72 songs on his own. In addition to his own material, Bob also recorded a series of songs by the R&B writing team of Jimmy Norman & Al Pyfrom (two of which are included on
Chances Are
). The idea was, quite simply, as Sims notes, “to cut Bob Marley in a rhythm and blues, Top 40 style so we could try to gain acceptance for him in America. For the truth of the matter was that it was to be many years before American radio would become receptive to genuine Jamaican reggae, a situation which has only very recently begun to change. Even in Jamaica, because of his Rastafarian beliefs, Marley’s early records sold without benefit of airplay, through the underground market.

BOOK: Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright
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