Tuff Gong (Bob Marley & The Wailers in general)

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Product:	Bob Marley & The Wailers in general
Date:	15/10/00 (207 review reads)
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For all of you who read my reviews on a regular basis will know of one of my loves, 2Pac, however this is another love of mine, I do not know exactly what brings me towards these two artists. I guess it is because both artists come from from bad backrounds and there music means something not like the Backstreet Boys or the Spice Girls.

Bob Marley died three years before I was even born, this shows you something special, that almost 20 years later Bob Marley is still known, I mean how many of you reading this actually reading this have never heard of Bob Marley, I doubt very many of you if any.

But if you take a different artist from 20 years ago, and say his name to the modern generation they will be like 'who the hell is he' and some of you golden oldies may have forgotten them as well (no insult meant)

So this review is dedicated to show to you all just how much of a strong person Bob Marley really was, to show you how he had to fight his way through life, and how he was taken down like most of the all time greats, this time with cancer.

Bob Marley (Robert Nesta Marley) was born on 6 February 1945, at a very young age Marley developed a love for music, roughly at the age of 7 he was listening to the likes of Fats Domino and Ray Charles, this was when he was living in the big city which Marley loved, tha fast life suited his earlier slower style.

At age 16 Marley wanted to record an album. Like other Jamaican kids he saw the music as an escape of the 'tuff' reality. Jimmy Cliff, a local musician (only 14 years old), had already made a few singles and introduced Bob to producer Leslie Kong. Bob made his first single Judge Not in 1961, but this record and the next one One More Cup Of Coffee (1962) didn't do well. Bob left Kong after he didn't received a paycheck of Lesly Kong.

It is important to see that success did not just fall at the feet of Bob Marley and that being 'screwed'
by Lesly Kong was all just part of his music career, but I have to ask 'what if', I mean, what if he had been paid, and had continued with Kong, would he have been the success he ended up being.

Not being given his paycheck of Kong may actually have been a blessing in disguise.

In 1964 'The Wailers' were formed, however it took a while before the band actually took is well known shape, the band started with an original seven arists, this started a very confused few years of people leaving and joining the band.

Peter (McIn)Tosh, Bunny Livingstone (alias Bunny Wailer), Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, Cherry, Constantine 'Dream Vision' Walker and Bob Marley, these are the original artists of the group.

Cherry and Junior left the group after a short time, after just a few recording sessions. The Wailers took up the 'ska' type of music, most of the material was being written by Marley himself, and in 1965 the band was becomming very popular.

They began playing full houses and recoreded early hits such as they recorded several hits: Simmer Down, It Hurts To Be Alone, Rule Them Rudie.

It was 10 February 1966 when Bob Marley married Rita Anderson. The day after, Bob went to the United States to visit his mother and her new husband. During Bob's stay in the States, Beverly Kelso left The Wailers and Rita and her cousin Dream joined the band. The Wailers changed their music from ska to rocksteady. The next year (the same year Bob's first child, Cedella, was born) the band left Coxsone and set up their own record label Wail 'N Soul 'M Record, also known as Wailing Souls, Wail 'M Soul 'M. Their first single from this label was Bend Down Low/Mellow Mood. At the end of that year, that same label was put an end to.

I think Rita Anderson was great for marley, as I have said the band was reorganised and the music progressed to the next stage, another 'what
if' if you ask me.

I dot exactly understand the bit of Bob's life after his first son, known as Ziggy, was born, it seemed two groups began to play as one? if someone knows the answer to my problem as I am interested to know, will they please leave a comment, thanx.

Bob met Jonny Nash. The Wailers recorded songs for the record company JAD Records. In 1970 The Upsetters joined The Wailers: Aston 'Family Man' Barret played bass and his brother Carlton played the drums. The band set up a new label Tuff Gong and the first single on that label was Run For Cover. It went uphill with the band and their own label. They made hit after hit.

This marked the start of the real success of Bob Marley and The Wailers, they signed a lucrative deal with a leading record company called Island Records, the money involved in this deal revolutionised reggae as a whole.

Before The Wailers signed to Island it was considered that reggae sold only singles and cheap compilation albums. This way The Wailers made the first reggae-album Catch A Fire. The band makes successful tours through the U.K. and the States. The follow-up album at Island was Burnin' and it included some of the band's older songs together with tracks like Get Up Stand Up and I Shot The Sheriff.

In the year 1976 the reggae-mania boomed in the States. Rolling Stone Magazine named Bob Marley & The Wailers 'Band of the year' in their February issue. Rastaman Vibration, cracked the American charts, but didn't do too well in The Netherlands. The album included a track called War of which the lyrics were taken from a speech by Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. On 3 December 1976 a tragedy happened. Six armed man shot at Bob Marley, his wife, the Wailers manager Don Taylor and Don Kinsey.

Why do people do it? I mean it was the same with 2Pac, he must have been shot about 10 times, two of my most favourite artists almost being killed for the
re beliefs. Why do people have to shoot at what they do not agree with, I just don't understand!

Hoever Marley bounced back, he realeased some classics, he showed the World what raggae was.

Bob Marley & The Wailers continued their popular status with Babylon By Bus (registration of a concert in Paris) and Survival. At the end of the seventies Bob Marley & The Wailers were the most important band on the road and they broke the festival records on the European continent. Their new Uprising album entered every chart in Europe. The band was even planning a new American tour, with Stevie Wonder, for the winter of 1980. Bob's health went downhill but he had the doctor's approval to start the American tour, which started in Boston in September. During a concert in New York Bob Marley almost fainted. The next morning, on 21 September 1980, he went jogging with Skilly Cole in Central Park. Bob collapsed and was taken back to the hotel. Several days later it became clear that Bob had a brain tumor and he had, according to the doctors, not even a month to live. Rita Marley wanted the tour to be canceled, but Bob wanted to continue the tour. So he played a marvelous show in Pittsburgh. But Rita couldn't agree with Bob's decision to continue and on 23 September the tour was canceled.

Bob was transported from Miami to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. There, the doctor's diagnosed cancer in the brain, lung and stomach. Bob was transported back to Miami, were he was baptized Berhane Selassie in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (a Christian church) on 4 November 1980. Five days later, in a last attempt to save Bob's life, he flew to a controversial treatment center in Germany. In February 1981 Bob had his 36th anniversary in the German clinic. Three months later, on 11 May 1981, Bob died in a hospital in Miami.

Bob Marley's funeral in Jamaica on 21 May 1981 could be compared with one of a king. H
undreds of thousands of people (including the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition) visited the funeral to celebrate the fact that Bob Marley was a real 'Jah Rastafari' after all. After the funeral Bob Marley's body was taken to his birthplace were itrests in a mausoleum. The mausoleum became a real place of pilgrimage in the years after.

A month before Bob's death, he was awarded Jamaica's Order Of Merit, the nation's third highest honor, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the country's culture. The prophet Gad insisted (before Marley's death) to become the owner of the ring Jah Rasafari. The ring, however, disappeard miraculously and nobody has seen the ring again. Bob Marley's mother says that the ring went back to the place of origin.

R.I.P MARLEY
Gone But Not Forgotten!

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