Bob Marley’s Early Years: From Nine Miles To London

Nesta Robert Marley was born on February 6, 1945, in Nine Miles, a district in St. Ann’s Parish on the north end of Jamaica. He spent his early childhood with his mother, Cedella Marley, sharing a tiny shack made of corrugated metal and wood in the mountainous countryside. “He was my first-born and very precious to the family and friends,” Cedella reported in Jim Henke’s essential sourcebook, Marley Legend: An Illustrated Life of Bob Marley. “He was always a jolly, happy little man. He loved to make friends, loved to play. I never had no trouble with him going to school and things like that. He was very obedient.”
Bob spent little time around his father, Captain Norval Marley, a white Jamaican who supervised land for the British government and essentially abandoned the family soon after his son was born. Bob once said of his mixed heritage: “I don’t have prejudice against meself. 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.”
In grade school, Bob loved to sing. “I don’t really know how I got started,” Marley remembered in 1975, “but I know me mother was a singer. Me mother is spiritual, like a gospel singer. She writes songs. I hear her singing first and then I just love music, love it, grow with it.” A cousin gave him a homemade guitar fashioned of bamboo and goatskin. Bob became “like a brother,” in Cedella’s words, with another Nine Miles youth who shared his interest in music, Neville “Bunny” Livingston. When Bob was still in grade school, his mother left him in the care of his maternal grandfather, Omeriah Malcolm, while she went to work in Kingston.
Around 1955, Bob Marley joined his mother in Kingston. They lived at various addresses on Berry Street, Oxford Street, and Regent Street, and then in 1958 settled into a three-year stay at 19 Second Street in Trench Town. Years later, Bob immortalized his experience living there in his beloved song “No Woman, No Cry”:
“Said, I remember when we used to sit
In the government yard in Trench Town
Observing the hypocrites
As they would mingle with the good people we meet
Good friends we’ve had
Oh, good friends we lost along the way . . .” In her book Bob Marley: My Son, Cedella Marley Booker remembered Bob singing the Christian hymn “In the Garden” one day after school. “I was stunned at how well he sang. Nesta has always been a singing child, but this is the first time I can remember being struck by his beautiful singing voice.” He made his first public appearance singing in a talent show at a local theater. “Me saw dem have a little t’ing down at Queens,” Marley remembered in 1976. “So one night me go in and sing a tune. Me nuh remember what it was, but me win a pound. The man must tell me me must start sing. And me did.”
Bob reunited with his childhood friend when Bunny and his father, Thaddeus Livingston, moved to Trench Town. Cedella and Thaddeus shared living quarters and had a daughter together, Pearl. Their sons immersed themselves in American radio broadcasts from Miami and New Orleans, dialing in the Drifters, Moonglows, Impressions, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Fats Domino, and even country musicians such as Jim Reeves and Lloyd Price. While living on Second Street, Bob said, he also started “listening to jazz, except me couldn’t understand it. After a while me get to understand it and me meet Joe Higgs and Seeco Patterson, who schooled me. After a while I smoke some ganja, some herb, and then I understood jazz. I tried to get into the mood where the moon is blue and understand the feelings expressed.”
Bob and Bunny were also drawn to a ska, a new sound emerging right in their own neighborhood. Ska typically featured a fast rhythm accented by horns riffing on the off-beat. The style was deeply influenced by R&B, especially the sound of New Orleans, with its horns, boogie piano, and strong bass. Most ska music was instrumental, with the after-beat played on rhythm guitar or piano. Bunny crafted a homemade guitar using copper wire, a sardine can, and a bamboo neck, and the two friends began singing calypso, ska, and American R&B. Asked about his influences in those days, Bob said, “My greatest influence was the Drifters – ‘Magic Moment,’ ‘Please Stay,’ those things. So I figured I should get a group together.”
By 15, Bob had dropped out of school to concentrate on singing. His mother arranged for him to work as an apprentice welder. One of the workers Bob sang with around the welding yard, Desmond Dekker, encouraged him to pursue his dream of making records. “Me did sing in school and love singing,” Marley explained, “but what really made me take it seriously is when I go and learn a trade name welding. Desmond Dekker used to learn trade [at the] same place, and we used to sing and him write songs. . . . Him go check out Beverly’s [a record label] and him do a thing named ‘Honour Your Mother and Father,’ which was a big hit in Jamaica. After that, him say, ‘Come, man,’ and me go down there and meet Jimmy Cliff, and him get me audition and me record a song for Beverly’s. It never really do nothing, but it was a good song still. Name ‘Judge Not.’” In his 1973 interview with journalist Carl Gayle, Marley added, “Jimmy was big then because he already had a hit name ‘Hurrican Hattie’ and later ‘Miss Jamaica,’ another big one. I really love Jimmy ’cause he always tries to help people.”
The label’s producer, Leslie Kong, liked Bob’s ska-influenced songs, and in 1962 he recorded Marley’s first singles at Federal Studio. The first release, the original song “Judge Not” backed with “Do You Still Love Me?,” was credited to Robert Marley. For his second single, Marley covered a recent C&W song by Claude Gray, “One Cup of Coffee,” backed with “Terror.” On the 45’s label, the record was credited to “Bobby Martell.” Neither of these 45s sold well, but they launched Marley’s recording career, and today they can be heard on the Bob Marley – Songs of Freedom box set.
Back in the government yard in Trench Town, Bob and Bunny were spending time with Joe Higgs, who’d been part of the famous pre-ska singing duo Higgs & Wilson. Higgs owned a guitar and coached Bob and Bunny as they worked on singing close harmonies. Higgs also wrote songs about smoking marijuana and the Rastafari religion, and in Marley, he found a willing disciple for these too. A decade later, Bob told Carl Gayle, “My greatest influence is a Rasta guy called Joe Higgs.” Bob and Bunny soon were joined by another young musician, Peter “Tosh” McIntosh, who also owned a guitar and could sing baritone. With Bunny singing the high parts, Bob handling tenor, and Tosh providing baritone, they practiced Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang” and “Wonderful World,” Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road, Jack,” the Impressions’ “Gypsy Woman,” and tunes by the Drifters. Peter Tosh explained, “Me and Bunny together had a kind of voice that could decorate Bob’s music and make it beautiful, so we just did that wholeheartedly.”
Peter Tosh also reported that soon after he joined Marley and Livingston, a youth loaned Bob an acoustic guitar: “We hold onto that guitar for a good period of time until I teach Bob to play it, and show Bunny some chords.” Joe Higgs also taught Bob some easy guitar chords and showed him how to write simple tunes. “When I started singing, I couldn’t play an instrument,” Marley explained. “How I learn to play guitar? I teach myself. Well, it grow together. The first time me try to write a song is the first time me try to play the guitar. So it really grow together. Me really like to stay with my guitar, but me never really take the guitar playing seriously.” Eventually singers Beverly Kelso and Junior Braithwaite began working with them. The group tried a series of names – the Teenagers, the Wailing Rudeboys, the Wailing Wailers – before finally settling on the Wailers. “Name ‘Wailers’ come from the Bible,” Marley told an interviewer in 1974. “There’s plenty places you meet up with weeping and wailing. Children always wail, y’know, cryin’ out for justice and all that.” Bunny Livingston changed his name to Bunny Wailer.
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Powered by his Rastafarian faith, his love for pop music, and his clearly honest political beliefs, Bob Marley was the one and only universal representative of Jamaica's famous reggae music. His songs of peace, rebellion and justice found audiences all over the world. As a platinum-selling superstar and a semi-religious icon, Marley's pro-active work in promoting peace, justice and brotherhood nearly outweighed the brilliance of his music.
He was born Robert Nesta Marley to a middle-aged white father and a teenage black mother in Trenchtown, Jamaica in 1945. He began singing professionally at age 16 with two friends, but it wasn’t until 1973 that Marley made his first professional recording. The album, Catch A Fire, introduced reggae to an international audience. Over the years to come, Marley produced many hits, such as “Exodus”, “Waiting in Vain”, “Jamming”, “Is This Love”, “No Woman, No Cry,” and “Lively Up Yourself.” On a European tour in 1977, Bob Marley and his backup band, the Wailers, played an informal game of soccer against a team of French Journalist, in which doing so, Marley injured his toe. Even though treatment revealed cancerous cells, Marley refused treatment, and eventually the cancer spread to his brain, lungs, and liver. On May 11, 1981, Marley died in a hospital in Miami. His burial in Nine Miles, Jamaica was fit for a king and he was awarded Jamaica's Order of Merit, one of the nation's highest honors, for his humanitarian efforts. The music world had lost one of its true and potent activists.
Bob Marley had arisen from the Rude Boy culture in the ghettos of Kingston, Jamaica and achieved nearly saint-like status with his message of "one love" and world peace, becoming a musical ambassador around the world.