Every Little Thing Gonna Be Alright Read Free Page A

a song in the studio. He said to let them go to music school first and learn to read and write music, something he had never done. Poor Ziggy, he was so disappointed. He was always eager to show Daddy. When Bob would go on the road, Ziggy would stand on the side of the stage begging to perform. Today Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers are headliners. Ziggy is similar to Bob in dedication to his work and in his positiveness. And what a thing! I’ve seen father and son look alike but never such a step-out- of-you-into-me–type likeness. But Stephen—he’s Bob, too, in his reserve, the shape of his hands, the way he walks.
    I miss Bob. When I feel things are too much to bear—particularly with the legal battles [over the Marley estate]—I especially wish he were here. It was cancer that took him. It started in his foot and spread up through his body. As a Rasta though, you’d never hear him saying “If I die . . .” or “When I die . . .” To Rastafarians life is an everlasting gift. But one day in the hospital Bob was ready to go. I heard him say, “God, take me please.” I held him in my arms and started singing to him. Then I started to cry. Bob looked up at me. “Don’t cry,” he said softly, “keep singing.”

Bob Marley at Studio One
by Hank Bordowitz
(Previously Unpublished)

    B EFORE Bob Marley became an international hero, before he even became an icon at home in Jamaica, he paid his dues. Like so many other Jamaican artists, he paid them to Studio One Records.
    Started by mobile sound system DJ Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd to ensure that he had music no other DJ on the circuit had (others did the same), Studio One became a major force in Jamaican music. Dodd had an excellent ear for what his listeners wanted and the artists he recorded at Studio One filled that bill. The studio and label became the breeding ground for nearly every major Jamaican star, and just about anyone who is or was anyone in reggae and ska passed through Studio One at one time or another. Dodd says that he didn’t even have to go looking for the artists he signed.
    “I used to have a sound system, what they now call a discotheque, playing all over,” he explains. “It started from the rhythm and blues, and we played a little jazz, until we started recording our own music in Jamaica. I used to visit a lot of live dances. That sound was what we emphasized when we started recording. So I had my fans and when we started recording locally, I had guys rooting for me. Whenever they would hear a good artist, they would bring them.”
    One of these fans was Secco Patterson. “This chap, Secco, he was the one who brought them,” Dodd recalls of how Bob Marley and the Wailers came to Studio One. “He said, ‘Boss, I have a good group here.’ He was a close friend of mine. He loved the music that I played on my sound system. Every weekend, he’d be where we had our session. Secco knew these guys and brought them for an audition. They were four boys and two girls. All singing. He was with them until Bob died. He played conga for them.”
    The six singing sensations Secco secured at Studio One were Mar-ley, Peter McIntosh (who later lost the “McIn” and went by the name of Tosh), Bunny Livingston (who took the band’s name and called himself Bunny Wailer), Junior Brathwaite, Beverly Kelso, and Cherry Green. They sang around Kingston as The Teenagers (which they certainly were at the time), the Wailing Rudeboys, and the Wailing Wailers, which they ultimately shortened to just the Wailers. When they came to Studio One, they were very young and unformed. Mar-ley was barely eighteen.
    “I was the only producer out there building the artists up from the ground floor,” Dodd says. “The other producers wanted somebody who was strong already and in the limelight. I would take a no-name guy by just auditioning and hearing his voice. I understood what it took to put it together. I took a little time putting it together. The more