Monday, December 24, 2007

Happy Christmas Everbody

Here's wishing everyone a really happy reggae Christmas and a cool 2008

HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Bob Marley Music Page

Monday, December 3, 2007

Bob Marley - The early days

The Bob Marley Music Page has a little early history of the great reggae artist for your information:

Robert "Bob" Nesta Marley was born on February 6, 1945, in the small village of Nine Mile in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica.

Bob's father was Norval Sinclair Marley, born in 1895 ans was a white Jamaican of English descent, with parents coming from Sussex. Norval was a Marine officer and captain as well as a plantation overseer when he married Cedella Booker, a black Jamaican woman who was then eighteen years old. Although Norval provided financial support for his wife and son, he seldom saw them as he was often away on naval trips.

Bob Marley was just ten years old when his father died of a heart attack at age 60, in 1955.

As a youth, Bob Marley suffered racial prejudice because of his mixed racial origins and faced questions about his own racial identity throughout his life.

He was once quoted as saying:

"I don't have prejudice against myself. 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."

Young Robert Marley and his mother moved to the slums of Kingston's Trenchtown after his father's death. It was a tough neighbourhood and he was forced to learn self-defense due to his being the target of bullying because of his racial makeup and small 5'4" stature. He soon earned a reputation for his physical strength for which he became nicknamed "Tuff Gong".

Marley made friends with Neville "Bunny" Livingston (who was later known as Bunny Wailer) and they started playing music together. He left school at just 14 and worked as an apprentice at a local welder's shop. In his free time Bob and Livingston made music with another friend, Joe Higgs who was a local singer and devout Rastafari. Higgs is regarded by most as Marley's mentor. It was at one of their jam sessions with Higgs and Livingston that Marley met Peter McIntosh (better known as Peter Tosh) who had similar musical ambitions.

In 1962 Bob Marley recorded his first two singles. "Judge Not" and "One Cup of Coffee" were produced by Leslie Kong, a local producer. These two songs which were released on the Beverley's label under the pseudonym of Bobby Martell, attracted almost no attention and flopped.

Those songs were later re-released on the album Songs of Freedom, which is a posthumous collection of Marley's songs.

Nice.

Bob Marley Music Page