Bob Marley: The Untold Story. Chris Salewicz

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СКАЧАТЬ been changes of which no one had notified him. Junior Braithwaite wasn’t with them: to Coxsone’s surprise and initial chagrin he learned that Braithwaite was in the final stages of preparing to leave Jamaica for Chicago with his family. ‘I only lead sung on “It Hurts to be Alone”,’ said Junior. ‘And that was the day, 28 August 1964, just before I flew out of Jamaica. Because they had to have me do a solo just before I left, and so it only took a few hours to learn this new tune, and one take. We were that tough, man.’

      If Coxsone were to continue working with the group, the producer insisted, the Wailers required a clearly defined lead vocalist. After some discussion, it was decided that the task should fall to Bob Marley; Bunny and Peter were promised they would also get their share of lead vocals. Coxsone was encouraged in this decision by ‘Simmer Down’, the contract-winning song Bob had sung at the audition which served a dual purpose: a warning to the newly emergent rude boys – that tribal grouping of cool, disaffected, and desperate youth – not to bring down the wrath of the law upon themselves; and a frustrated response to a letter from Bob’s mother in the United States, fearful that her only son was becoming involved with bad company.

      The full panoply of his label’s finest ska musicians was summoned by Coxsone for the session. Yet again Ernest Ranglin arranged the tune, whilst Don Drummond, Jamaica’s king of the trombone, added his deeply creative jazz parts. Drummond, who had played with Ranglin in the Eric Dean Orchestra, was the virtuoso of a group of musicians who shortly were to be working together, for a little over a year, under the name of the Skatalites, an ensemble that would in time become legendary. As well as Drummond, the group included Roland Alphonso and Tommy McCook, the group’s leader, on tenor sax, Lester Sterling on alto sax, Johnny ‘Dizzy’ Moore on trumpet, Jah Jerry on guitar, Lloyd Nibbs on drums, Lloyd Brevitt on bass and Jackie Mittoo on keyboards, along with Theophilus Beckford and Clue-J Johnson.

      Being part of this elite team was far more financially remunerative than being one of the accredited artists on the record label. Coxsone paid £2 a tune per musician, and frequently they would record twenty songs in a day. One bonanza day, Jah Jerry worked on fifty songs in an epic session at Beverley’s. In 1964, this kind of money would have meant you were considered rich in the United Kingdom or even in the United States, let alone in impoverished Jamaica. Often hanging around at 13 Brentford Road was Jackie Opel, the Bajan vocal star, first pushed by Leslie Kong, and renowned for the rare six-octave range with which he would perform his soul tunes; his ‘Cry Me a River’ (aka ‘You Gotta Cry’) tune had sold a million copies in Jamaica, Britain, and the US, and it was said that Coxsone was anxious that he should not learn of this. (When in 1970 Jackie Opel was in a fatal car-crash on a highway in his native Barbados, there were some who attributed this to the effects of obeah.) Notwithstanding the financial imbalance between Studio One’s session musicians and the Wailers, Jah Jerry could not but help being struck by their extreme confidence on the ‘Simmer Down’ session. This was a mark, he was sure, of their regular, rigorous rehearsals.

      The Wailers, noted Johnny Moore, trumpet player for the Skatalites, had first come along to Studio One ‘more or less as the Impressions: they were dissuaded from going along that line, and influenced to go inside themselves, however silly or simple they feared what they found there might sound like. They were simply urged to try and cultivate their own thing. And it worked. Even at that age they knew what they wanted. From the time that they realised that trying to be the Impressions was not what they should be doing, they really checked themselves and got into it. You can hear it in the music.

      ‘At the time they were young and vibrant, and you could see they were very good friends: they were very, very close to one another. They really did care about each other. I guess that’s why they made a success of it as it was.

      ‘Bob didn’t necessarily seem like the leader. The thing was so closely knit, the sound, whatever they were trying to get at: that was the objective, the force of what they were trying to accomplish. Rather than worrying about you lead or me lead: everyone would put their shoulder and heave-ho. They seemed to realise that it’s much easier to get things done that way.’

      It was for professional reasons that Joe Higgs would accompany the group up from Trench Town to Studio One. ‘Wailers weren’t even conscious of sound when I started to deal with them. To hear that “Joe assisted with the Wailers” – this is foolishness. The Wailers weren’t singers until I taught them. It took me years to teach Bob Marley what sound consciousness was about. It took me years to teach the Wailers. For example, they will be going to make a record and I would go with them and there is somebody making constant mistakes. I would just have to take his part to get the record finished in time.’

      (Interestingly, at this time, Peter Tosh brought a potential singer called Leonard Dillon to Studio One. Although he would later form the Ethiopians with Aston Morrison and Stephen Taylor, Dillon recorded four tunes as a solo act for Coxsone Dodd, under the nom-de-disque of Jack Sparrow; he was backed on all of them by the voices of the Wailers, with the tunes arranged to an extent by Lee Perry but largely by Jackie Mittoo, the label’s driving force from 1964 to 1969, its golden period. Working as musical director, principal arranger and keyboard player, Mittoo’s relaxed, cool style on his Hammond B3 organ would make him a legend. But, according to Dillon, who occasionally played trumpet with the Skatalites, the legend that Bob Marley became was not at that point the main thrust behind the Wailers. Instead, he said, he felt it was Bunny Livingston who was pushing the group along.)

      Beverley Kelso was born on 14 April 1948, the third eldest of three sisters and four brothers, in Jones Town. But when she was three her family moved to 4 Fifth Street in Trench Town. The popular conception of Trench Town as an area of grinding poverty was not the place that Beverley knew: ‘Trench Town people dressed to their best. I would say there wasn’t poor people, because majority of Trench Town people go to high school, they’re educated people.’

      Also on Fifth Street lived Alton Ellis and his family: the entire neighbourhood would gather to watch him and his talented sister Hortense rehearse in their yard. Even at a young age, Beverley Kelso knew something of the art of singing. In the school choir at Denham Town primary school, she was the lead vocalist on the hymns they would perform at morning assembly. The then zenith of her vocal achievements was when she performed solo, singing ‘I Waited for the Lord’ at St Andrew Scots Kirk for Queen Elizabeth II on the 1954 visit to the island by the newly crowned British monarch. ‘I was the first to sing. They didn’t even wait until the song finished, they were just clapping. And then that made me sing for the better.’

      To perform before Queen Elizabeth, Beverley needed to overcome her natural shyness. ‘Sometimes we’d all just sit there on the side of the road and somebody would start to sing something. But I was a quiet one. I never bother. I just shut up and listen. But I loved the singing. But I was so shy. I’m still shy.’

      Ten years after that regal performance, some friends of Beverley persuaded her to accompany them to Chocomo Lawn, the celebrated outdoor dancehall in Denham Town, west Kingston. (Although run in conjunction with Edward Seaga and the JLP, Chocomo’s appeal overrode its political affiliation.) When she arrived there, they asked her to perform, suggesting she sing Patti LaBelle’s ‘Down the Aisle’. And the moment Beverley uttered the opening lines, ‘the fence tear down,’ the crowd pushing forward to see her: this made Beverley so nervous that she started the song all over again.

      The next evening, after she had returned home from school, Beverley was cleaning the kitchen when there was a knock on the door. Bob Marley, who had seen her Chocomo Lawn performance, was standing there. ‘I asked him, “You want somebody?” He said, “Yes, you.” I said, “Me?” And he said, “Yeah, I’d like it if you’d sing a song with me.” So I said, “Well, you’ll have to ask my mother if you want me to sing with you. But my mother is not here now. She went to work.”’

      Beverley had never met Bob before. ‘My first impression of him was ordinary. Ordinary. I didn’t think of him as nobody special. СКАЧАТЬ