Bob Marley: The Untold Story. Chris Salewicz

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СКАЧАТЬ Caribbean: ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, not like the ones I used to know.’ At the same session they recorded ‘I Left My Sins’ and ‘Sound the Trumpet’ – on which Johnny Moore took the solo on the instrument.

      Religious holidays, specifically Christmas and Easter, were always counter-balanced in Jamaica by temporal celebrations, with top acts playing several morning shows, and literally running between the various venues, as they could not risk relying on the tardy bus service: from the Ward Theatre show, the Wailers would hurry up Orange Street, and along Slipe Road, to the State Theatre; further up Slipe Road they would reach the Regal on Old Hope Road; and then they would rush to the Carib, at the top of Slipe Road in Crossroads Square.

      Enormous sartorial efforts would be made by the audiences, many clad in top hats and white gloves, wearing pleated and frilled shirts and carrying walking canes – as though they were attending an evening at London’s Café de Paris, rubbing shoulders with royalty.

      The Wailers’ first exposure to such shows came on Christmas Day of that year. Their first significant live performances since enjoying chart success – ‘Simmer Down’ alone had sold 80,000 copies – the group was determined to wipe the floor with any opposition. Accordingly, they had assiduously rehearsed for over six weeks; warming up on the local beach with a game of football, they would practise until their act was an explosion of choreographed gymnastics, each member adept at splits and snap-falls. Bob, for example, would take Bunny and throw him in the air, fall to the floor as Bunny performed a perfect pair of splits above him, then rise into a kneeling position as Bunny jumped over his back; tall Peter, meanwhile, would balance and bounce Bob and Bunny like rubber balls. And, onstage, all this would take place as they assumed their customary vocal positions at the microphones. Beverley Kelso, meanwhile, was left to dance on her own, off to one side of the stage.

      Many of these shows were put on by Coxsone Dodd – the Ward Theatre event was always one of his promotions – while Victor ‘Captain Daddy Glasses’ Sampson, Tony Cobb, Ronnie Nasralla, and Clancy Eccles would also promote these morning concerts.

      At the Palace Theatre event on 25 December 1964, also promoted by Coxsone Dodd, the Wailers were backed by the Skatalites. Bouncing on to the stage as though they were in the full gaze of the sun on their sandy rehearsal space, the Wailers leapt into their first number, inevitably, ‘Simmer Down’. As the choreographed performance and heartfelt vocals of these new local heroes grabbed the audience’s attention, Dodd stood at the side of the stage in awe: great secrecy had surrounded the Wailers’ rehearsals for their Christmas Day shows, and he was thrilled by the sight of their routines. ‘Simmer Down’ was followed by ‘I Don’t Need Your Love’, ‘How Many Times?’, a version of the Impressions’ ‘I’m Going Home’, and ‘Amen’, which had been the B-side of ‘Simmer Down’. During the next number, ‘It Hurts to be Alone’, in the middle of a guitar solo by the masterful Trinidadian Lynn Taitt, the electrical power for the entire building cut out, infuriating the audience.

      The Palace was located in a district controlled by a don with whom Coxsone Dodd had had some bad run-ins. Known as Big Junior, his reputation had been considerably bolstered in 1962 when he had appeared as one of the Three Blind Mice, a trio of hitmen, in the opening sequence of Dr. No, the first James Bond film to be shot, set largely in Jamaica. Due to their previous history, Coxsone assumed that the power had been cut by Big Junior’s gang to sabotage his promotion: after all, during the outage, a crew had rampaged through the packed crowd, snatching chains, bracelets, and wallets.

      Hardly according with the season of good will, the audience raged on, yelling abuse and showering bottles like rain on the stage. In the dark, the Wailers nervously felt their way backstage, all of them squeezing into a single toilet together and hiding for at least an hour, feeling the storm of anger coming closer.

      Suddenly the lights came back on: the loss of electricity had had nothing to do with Big Junior – the power-cut had been city-wide, and the don and his men were innocent of causing the outage. Eventually, the concert resumed. ‘When the show started again,’ said Beverley Kelso, clearly impressed by the boys’ gymnastic efforts, ‘Bob coming from one side like he was flying, Peter coming from one side like he was flying, flapping their arms, because they couldn’t dance.’ (Her assessment, of course, is markedly different from Derrick Morgan’s view of Bob Marley as a superlative dancer.)

      The riot, however, immediately enhanced the Wailers’ reputation and legend. When they arrived later that day at the Ward Theatre, the crowd saw Bob and lifted him up on to their shoulders.

      After the riot, the Wailers wrote the song ‘Hooligans’ about Big Junior. Another song also emerged from that Christmas morning, written by Peter Tosh: ‘Jumbie Jamboree’ with its newsworthy line ‘What a jumbie jamboree take place in the Palace’ – ‘jumbie’, a word that was by then old-fashioned in Jamaica, was a synonym for ‘duppy’. Both these songs, along with ‘Diamond Baby’ and ‘Playboy’, were recorded almost immediately, this time using a two-track recorder. (By now, Joe Higgs had established himself as a regular presence at Wailers sessions, sharpening up any harmonies he felt were too blunt. It was at one of these Studio One sessions that Coxsone, disagreeing with Joe, punched him in the eye, affecting his sight; it was always said that Coxsone, who had also kicked and punched his helper, ‘Little’ Lee Perry, would wait until you turned away before he hit you.)

      Although each of the Wailers had only received a fee of £7 for the Palace gig, Coxsone Dodd was so delighted with the ultimate success of this chaotic show that, immediately after they came offstage, he gave them all a bonus of £3 – and topped it up with another pound per person at the studio the next day.

      By the time they came to play their second big-production live show, in Montego Bay, ‘Mr Dodd’ had decided to give Beverley Kelso £2 for a new dress; when Peter and Joe Higgs learned of this, they tried to get her to share the money with them. It is this dress she wears on the cover of the Wailers’ Studio One records on the distinguished American reggae reissue label, Heartbeat Records. After driving all day to Montego Bay on the north coast for the show, they discovered that the venue had no sound system and no lights. Bob Marley attempted to calm the furious crowd, saying they would somehow perform all the same, but to no avail – they drove back to Kingston, exhausted. A further performance, again at Kingston’s Sombrero Club, turned out to be a big success, however. ‘That was great,’ said Beverley Kelso.

      Smaller-scale shows were played most Monday nights at the Jamaica Success Club on Wildman Street, about a quarter mile to the east of East Parade; this was a weekly residency for the Coxsone Sound. An indoor, roofed venue, which held at least three thousand people, the Success had a small stage and the three frontline Wailers would huddle around a single microphone. Mind you, they would only be playing a couple of songs, generally the two sides of their latest release. And there would be half as many people dancing outside in the street as inside the venue. In fact, the ranking dancers, such as Persian the Cat and Harry T, would only dance outside, where they were certain of a large, dedicated audience. (Persian the Cat was a skinny, dark-brown Rastaman who would integrate his walking-stick, hat, and handkerchief into the moves he would ‘originate’ – the Tommy McCook instrumental ‘Persian Cat’ was written about him.) Another regular Saturday-night date for Dodd’s sound system was at the Forester Hall.

      Although their sound made them aural celebrities in any part of Jamaica with access to a radio or jukebox, in downtown Kingston the Wailers went largely unrecognised, passers-by refusing to marry the down-to-earth appearances of these youths with any concept of stardom. Those familiar with them, however, would hail them on the street, receiving a personal Wailers vocal performance in exchange for a beer and some small change. Sometimes they would sing in the evenings for Sanghu, a drinksman who ran a small gambling house in the neighbourhood. Babu Man, a local gangster with a fearsome reputation, would often ask them to sing for him. The Wailers were not unnerved by his reputation: Bunny’s father enjoyed an even worse СКАЧАТЬ