Did you Know? Issue 6

1962: Derrick Morgan
I met Bob Marley just about the time I was gonna migrate to England. I shared a bill with him on my farewell show. He danced more than he sing, and he would tire before he’d finish the first song. I used to take him back and tell him, “Calm yourself, sing two verses before you start dancing. You know, dance during the solo.” I remember Bob in those ways. (http://swindlemagazine.com/issue09/the-legend-of-ska/3/)

1973: max’s Kansas city
Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com
Think back to 1973. (No, better not. Many of you were not even born, and Butler — well, Butler was already moving on from jeans to chinos.) The great rock revolution of the ‘60s was over. Music had become what it is now: a business. A depressing time for Butler, who kept looking for flowers sprouting through the concrete and, month after month, came up with only weeds for his troubles.
And then, at Max’s Kansas City, Butler found what he had been seeking. Some friends of friends were playing; an unknown group called The Wailers was on the bill. These young Jamaicans came out, freaky as Sly Stone, clearly tranced-out behind some serious ganja, and began to play amazingly complicated music that had Butler twisting in one direction while the beat had him going in another.

Excited and limp, Butler went backstage (back then, back there, no big deal). Met the Wailers (Bob Marley was not then The Star). And, the next day, bought “Catch A Fire,” their American debut.
There are two versions of the album cover. One is a rendition of a Zippo lighter (it opens — and, very quickly, breaks). The other features Marley smoking a huge spliff. That one came later. Butler got the original.
And was it ever original. There were sweet seduction songs. There were songs that evoked Jamaica ‘s colonial past. Angry political songs: “ No chains around my feet/But I’m not free/I know I am bound here in captivity…” And the spooky Rasta dreamscape, “Midnight Ravers,” with its devastating opening condemnation (“You can’t tell the women from the men/ ’cause they’re dressed in the same pollution”) and its Book of Revelations vision: “I see ten thousand chariots/And they coming without horses/The riders — they cover their face/So you couldn’t make them out in smoky place.”
Rarely has music been better matched to lyrics. “ Midnight Ravers” is the best example. A repeated corskscrew organ riff. Guitars that sting, then soar. And a bass guitar/drum pattern that paints a musical picture of camel-like horses riding, riding, riding, in the dead of night.
Butler followed The Wailers around that season. He had dinner with them in their dressing room in a Philadelphia club and watched them smoke so much ganja they should have passed out. Instead, they went on stage and — like angels, or aliens, or just humans blessed with telepathy — played a note-perfect set that converted everyone in the room to blithering fandom.
The sanctification of Bob Marley began the following year. There was only one more true Wailers album (“Burnin’”) before the band changed. And then came all the songs you know — great songs, but great in isolation, like great singles. “Catch A Fire,” on the other hand, is a great album: there’s a logic to the flow of the songs, a satisfaction that’s bigger than the sum of the individual tunes.

Yeah, you’ve got the greatest hits. But do you have the greatest album? Not until you have this.
The year was 1973. “The Harder They Come” was a cult movie, and my friends and I spent our nights — and, sometimes, days — listening to the soundtrack. The Wailers (before Bob Marley become God and the group was relegated to back-up status) came to town, and I met them, and Toots and The Maytals came to town, and I met them too.
One afternoon, I went down to the Chelsea Hotel to suggest a movie to Marley. Before I could tell him my ideas, he put his spliff down long enough to draw a square on a piece of paper. “This one is us,” he said. He drew another square. “This one is the bank.” He drew a connecting line, looked up at me and grinned — and our movie died right there.

December 1974: John Altman (arranger, composer, saxophonist) John: On my 25 birthday a friend who played with bob Marley rang me to say he and Bob had just arrived in London and was there anything going on. So, of course, I invited them to my birthday party and they played (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/alumni/falmer_archive/winter06.pdf and www.neilinnes.org/johnaltman/johnaltman.htm)

1975: Hollywood Park
Clark “Motown” Adams: …. He was crooning one day in 1975, as he played Frisbee at Hollywood Park, where his cousin had decided he was going to ride a horse around a small horse path adjacent to the famous racetrack. When the Frisbee flew near a group of 30 Rastafarians sitting under a tree, Adams struck up a conversation. “I meet people so easily,” Adams says. “There was a guy sitting down playing a guitar, and I started joking around. And it was Bob Marley, sitting in the middle of this whole group. I didn’t know who he was; I had never really heard reggae. I sat down with him and they were all getting blasted. And then my cousin comes out of that gate, and that horse took off running and he dragged him around that track. “I said to all these guys, ‘I told him not to get his crazy black ass on that horse. He shoulda stayed up here with me. That horse ain’t got no sense at all.’ And Bob Marley dropped his guitar and was on the ground laughing, holding his stomach. They were all just cracking up, and then my cousin came up with us and Bob said, ‘You should’ve listened to the mon.’” Adams stayed in touch with the reggae mystic until Marley’s death 1981, and he’s taken to heart what Marley told him: “I’m just a person. I believe in all people together, all people united.” (www.citypages.com/detail.asp?ArticleID=14658)

1978: Bob Corbit
Bob Corbit, one of Madison’s great saxophonists, met Bob Marley in Jamaica 1978 at Bob Marley’s personal compound. Corbit, during that same visit, was at first literally held captive at Bob Marley’s compound, forced to stand for hours against a fence wondering whether he’d be shot and left for dead because a promoter had brought Corbit’s band to Jamaica and used Marley’s name to falsely promote the concert. Bob Marley later learned Bob Corbit’s band didn’t have anything to do with the false promotion and Marley actually helped them hold a concert on Marley’s private soccer field where the Tuff Gong soccer team often practiced with Mr. Marley (http://www.groovology.com/?p=67) Ras Danny
Ras Danny, a fellow resident of Trench Town, Jamaica, first met Bob Marley when Bob began to manage Earth Disciples, Ras Danny’s band. “Bob Marley was, to me, a teacher”, reminisces Ras Danny, “When Bob Marley passed off, a group of us in Trench Town did the first Bob Marley tribute show. The next year his wife and mother joined us, and it’s been going on ever since.”

1978-1979: Ras Jahn Bullock
It was a combination of his faith and his love of reggae that caused Bullock to travel to Jamaica in search of Bob Marley as a young man. After making his way to Jamaica, Bullock befriended a man who was into the reggae scene, who got him onto Marley’s bus. There, Bullock couldn’t see Marley at first, because the back of the bus was filled with ganja (marijuana) smoke. Once Bullock walked through the cloud, he saw Marley sitting in the center of a group of people.”I asked him, how do you feel about white people playing reggae music?” Bullock said. Leaning forward, Bullock recited Marley’s words, “He said, ‘Until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eye, there will always be war.”Bullock had his answer. He later learned that Marley was reciting a speech by Selassie to the League of Nations.”There’s no color barrier as long as you ride the rhythm and respect the culture,” Bullock said. “Anybody can play the music.” Years later, Bullock ran into Marley again backstage at a concert in Vermont. At the time, his band didn’t have enough money to record an album. When Marley learned of his plight, he said that he would pay all the recording costs for Bullock’s band to record an album if the band could come to Jamaica. “I didn’t know he had never said that to another group and that he was very ill with cancer at the time,” Bullock said. Although the band didn’t have money for the trip, fans on their mailing list sent enough money for the six musicians and one sound engineer to go. Although Marley had died before they got there, and his recording studio shut down in the battle that followed over his holdings, the band was taken to another studio to record their album, so that Marley’s promise would be fulfilled, Bullock said. (www.dailyhampshiregazette.com)

In 1979 Bob Marley invited Ras Jahn to bring the band to Jamaica to record their first album at his Tuff Gong studio. Bob said “just come to Jamaica and Ill take care of the rest. Six musicians and their sound engineer made the trip. Allyn Dorr on bass, Randell Clunes on drums, Jonathan Dorr on guitar, David Boatwright on guitar, Boo Pearson on percussion, Ras Jahn Bullock on vocals and percussion and Monda AKA Mickey Chisum on sound. While they were arranging for the financing for the trip they learned that Bob was in Africa and he was very ill. Tuff Gong was being shut down and reorganized. Bob had already made arrangements with the band. His business manager and accountant, Colin Leslie, made new arrangements for the band to record at Dynamic Studio in Trenchtown. Geoffrey Chung and Clive Hunt were brought on board as engineer and producer. From this collaboration came the first album “Dealers World”.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=854 17447

1979: Detroit’s Masonic Temple
In 1979 King Sundiata Keita made his way to Detroit’s Masonic Temple to interview Bob Marley and the Wailers.
“The band was rehearsing in the dressing room, and I started jamming. Junior Marvin [the group’s guitarist] said to me, ‘Man, you sound pretty good. Why don’t you go ask Bob if you can sit in with us tonight?”’
Keita was hesitant. “I just couldn’t fix my mouth to say anything.”Despite his stammering, Keita would make his way onstage that night. With encouragement and a shove by an enthusiastic Marvin, the shy 21-year-old found himself staring down the pipe of the same stage lights as his heroes.He laughs. “All of a sudden you see this skinny kid come out from the wings. Yep, I played with Bob Marley.” (http://www.metrotimes.com)

1980 Philadelphia
Betty Price: I met Bob Marley at a concert in Philadelphia in about 1980. My friend and I somehow finagled a way to get backstage. When we got there, we saw him talking to someone. He looked up, but I didn’t want him to see me — I just wanted to observe. Also, when people lined up to talk to him, I shied away at the last moment. Afterwards, there was a party at a club in Philly, and we were all there. I did not approach him. I was not bold in that manner.
The next day, my friend and I were invited to the Wailer’s rooms at a hotel by someone in his entourage. I was closer still. There was general conversation all around, which entailed his belief in Rastafarianism. He seemed interested in talking to me, but he left to meet his girlfriend — Miss World; her name is Cindy.
I’m kind of glad it happened that way. After all he was married! (www.gossip-1.com/bob-marley.htm)

1980 essex house
Steve Morse, rock journalist: I also fell hard for reggae, going to Jamaica a couple of times and interviewing reggae patriarch Bob Marley at the Essex House hotel in Manhattan. That was a chaotic experience. I arrived at 11 a.m. and couldn’t find his room. I asked a cleaning attendant, and she said with a smile, “Just follow your nose.” The scent of marijuana led me to a room where several members of Marley’s entourage were sharing two king-size joints while kicking a soccer ball and bumping into a picture window overlooking Central Park. Marley sat on a couch, reading aloud from the Bible’s Book of Revelation (with its “lion of the tribe of Judah” reference so important to Marley’s Rastafarian religion). He ignored me and kept reading for about 10 minutes, until I finally dared to say, “Bob, I appreciate the reading, but the Globe sent me down to talk about your music.” Suddenly, the soccer playing stopped. Everyone looked at me as though I had interrupted God himself. But after a moment, Marley said, “You’re right, mon. Come over and let’s talk.” He closed the Bible and gave me his attention as we discussed his theme of world brotherhood. As soon as the interview was finished, the soccer playing resumed, the Bible was reopened, and I was ushered out the door.
Marley was a brilliant performer, and I reviewed his memorable Amandla peace concert at Harvard Stadium. It was the only time I saw bongs being sold inside the stadium. You’d see clusters of fans puffing on the bongs in the bleachers as puzzled security guards left them alone. (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2006/04/09/a_rock_critics_greatest_hits/?page=1)

Sting
Later on, Sting, who’s travelled ahead in his Jag, recounts how he was taken to meet Bob Marley in Los Angeles on their last tour. “He liked what we were doing and this rasta came round and took me into the house where he was staying. He knocked at the door and a voice comes over the entry phone saying ‘who’s there?’. This guy answers ‘I and I mon’ and I’m standing there trying not to laugh.” (http://www.sting.com/news/interview.php?uid=1606)

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