JUNIOR BRAITHWAITE: Peter used to walk with his guitar. Peter and Bob knew a few chords on the guitar at the time. And we used to walk together, we used to just hang together, man, and people would ask us to do a tune. And we would stop and sing on a street corner or at the tailor shop, or anywhere for that matter.
BUNNY WAILER: Wailers was almost the first group that went over three people, even over two people. It was always duos in those times. Blues Busters were a duo, Higgs and Wilson, Alton and Eddie, Bunny and Skully. But the Maytals trio came about two years before us.
ROGER STEFFENS: There has been some confusion about the band’s name in this period, with people referring to them variously as “the Wailers,” “Bob Marley and the Wailers,” “the Wailing Wailers” and “the Wailing Rude Boys.”
JOE HIGGS: Our first understanding is “Wailing Wailers” ’cause Coxson was trying to use that name, even though they were the Wailers.
BEVERLEY KELSO: We never have no other name than the Wailers.
JUNIOR BRAITHWAITE: It was the Wailing Wailers, not Bob and the Wailers. We were never called the Wailing Rude Boys.
BUNNY WAILER: Wailers didn’t have to sing no dirty things. Wailers bring down the house without that. See songs like “Rude Boy.” We used to sing “ska quadrille,” but the rude boys [thought we] were saying “cyan go a jail, cyan go a jail, cyan go a jail.” That relate to his happening, ’cause that’s the only thing he fears—jail—until he gets used to it. But until then jail is his only enemy, where he’s locked away from the freedom that he’s had. It was like a bet between rude boys and rude boys [about which lyric was right]. So they would meet us, wait for us, to stop the Wailers to find out, because man already bet a pound, ten shillings. One man say it’s “ska quadrille.” One man who was close to Wailers, hearing Wailers rehearse, might be at the studio, those people would actually know what was said. So the people who was like on the streets now, the song just come to them on the jukebox, on the radio, on the sound system—them hang on to “cyan go a jail.” So there was always a controversy about what the Wailers really said, so we had to be clarifying these things too all the time.
ROGER STEFFENS: The group’s first ballad to make a big impression was composed by the teenaged Junior Braithwaite and recorded on August 28, 1964, the day before he left the island for Chicago.
JUNIOR BRAITHWAITE: I was only thirteen at the time, and my parents were already in the States, so I had to just move along with my family. I only sung lead on “It Hurts To Be Alone.” And that was the day 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 didn’t have no problem in recording, it was the one cut, and it was only two-track studio too. I mean, everything playing on one track, one cut, just like that. It’s not like it is today, sophisticated, and more studio techniques. We were that tough, man.
You know, we did a few stage shows just before I left home, and they used to pick us up off the stage, man. I mean, I remember them picking me up over their heads, the people, and it was a thrill! We played at the Ward, we did about three shows together.
BUNNY WAILER: Junior Braithwaite led “It Hurts To Be Alone” originally, and that was really a smash. In that song, what happened is that when we started listening to the Impressions in those times, we were just acquainted with Curtis Mayfield’s writing and arrangements, and we were fascinated by the way he did this song, “I’m So Proud.” And out of that song came “It Hurts To Be Alone.”
We never met Curtis Mayfield, however. When he came to Jamaica in the early sixties we went to see him. We were in the first row of the Carib Theatre and we took in the Impressions. They were our loved ones, we fought our way to get in the front row. But that’s as close as we got to the Impressions in real life. We never met them. I don’t know if Bob did, maybe Bob did, I don’t know.
SEGREE WESLEY: Junior left, I say, when they became famous. Junior had the better voice. You know, that childish, child voice. But Bunny could always hold a note and sing in the more melodic setting, you see? While to me Peter was a person, well, if you have a song, you give him a song that would be like a protest song per se, Peter would deliver that better. But Bob had a chanting thing about him where it was unique, you know? He would make some funny sounds and it still a part of what is, you know? So Bob had the versatility to flow from here to there but Bob didn’t really have the voice to carry, you know? But from where he was he came a long way and it was through practice that put him where he is.
ROGER STEFFENS: In this period, the Wailers began to work on their musicianship.
SEGREE WESLEY: One thing I’ll give Peter credit for teaching Bob was the early starting of playing the guitar. Bob and Bunny would come without Peter to my home and say, “Come, Segree, we’re going to work.” That’s how he said it. And then we’d go in this kitchen, we used to call it the kitchen, Metty’s kitchen.
BUNNY WAILER: Wailers playing guitar was a self-taught thing. The man have no time to sit down and teach man nothin’. Every man has his season to develop having the guitar. Sometimes Pete plays the guitar so much that he is tired of it. So I have it for a couple of days, maybe a week, like a football; sometimes, every man has a time to keep the ball. So within their time of keeping the guitar, you learn, you teach yourself, by just looking at people holding different chords.
CHERRY GREEN: Most of the time Bob led the group. When we rehearsed, Bob would just pick his guitar and he come out with something and then sometimes we’d add words to it. We all wrote. We didn’t even have a tape recorder. We were out there in the dark with our kerosene tin lamp or the fire or the stars.
I agree that Junior had the best voice in the group. Oh, yes. He carried. I sing “Lonesome Feeling.” The voice up there is me. And “There She Goes.” And then “Maga Dog,” you can hear me and Peter.
BEVERLEY KELSO: Going to the studio they would walk and sing. They would walk and carry on with a lot of clowning. Bob would be pushing Bunny, Bunny would be pushing Bob and Peter and they laugh and they clown and they tease each other. They would laugh at people. They used to do a lot of funny things, the little things that they talk you just sit down and just crack up. At that time they didn’t used to smoke, nobody never smoked. And Junior, me and Junior was two little short ones, so me and Junior would stay in the back hold each other’s hand and walking and start talking our little talk and Bunny and Peter would be there and Bob carrying. They were fun to be around, I’m telling you. I used to love just to hear them talk and carry on with their antics. I want to be in the midst of them. Whatever they’re talking about I wanna be around them, you know?
ROGER STEFFENS: Studio One was a large, high-ceilinged room on Brentford Road in a rough area of downtown Kingston. A typical session for the Wailers would find them backed by the cream of Jamaica’s most hard-core Rasta musicians, known collectively as the Skatalites. The Skatalites recorded for other producers too, under a wide range of different names. Among the chief members were Lloyd Knibb on drums, Lloyd Brevett on bass, “Jah Jerry” Haynes on guitar, Jackie Mittoo on piano, Don Drummond on trombone, Roland Alphonso and Tommy McCook on tenor sax, “Dizzy Johnny” Moore on trumpet, and Dennis “Ska” Campbell on baritone sax. Mr. Dodd served as both engineer and producer of the earliest sessions. Cherry Green and Beverley Kelso spoke to me in New York City in 2003 about their initial experiences at Studio One.
CHERRY GREEN: My first recording session we rehearse all the night until we know the song. And they said tomorrow we going over to the studio. I’d never been in a studio before. It was scary. It’s nervous. I mean, a lot of people there.
BEVERLEY KELSO: I wasn’t nervous. They said I was shy still, you know. But I don’t think I was shy to sing, but after singing I wouldn’t say a word. If you say something to me I would answer you, but other than that being in the limelight, I would sing and Bob and Peter and Bunny would be one place with all the rest of the guys and I wo
uld be just by myself. I was an observer.
They used to say I’m sneaky and I’m this and that. But that didn’t bother me because I know they respect me. I used to look up on them and they look up on me. With respect. They treat me like a sister and they treat me good. They talk to me good and everything. I enjoyed being with them.
ROGER STEFFENS: For Beverley, it was clear from the start that Bob was head Wailer.
BEVERLEY KELSO: Bob always taught me the part that he wanted me to sing. Bob was the acknowledged leader of the group. After the first session, it was like every day or every other day we would be in the studio actually recording. Doing something. If we’re not recording for ourselves, we were backing up other people because we have other people coming and singing and we’ll be singing backing up, you know? We’re not a part of their group but if anybody were recording we would be there backing up, singing with, for instance, Tony Gregory. Anybody else in the studio singing and want backup we would just come in and harmonize. Everybody would just backup sing, clap, whatever you wanna do over there to back up everybody. And everybody would have the different part harmony to hold.
I know sometimes that you don’t hear me and I just couldn’t hold the harmony and Bob would say what? I used to walk off and Bob said, she wouldn’t even try, she won’t try, she just walk away and just leave people alone. She wouldn’t even try. You know, that’s how he used to talk. I just walk away and leave them.
So we was in the studio most of the time.
JOE HIGGS: Every day they would go to the studio after a while, and whatever they wanted, Coxson would give them five shillings or ten shillings.
BEVERLEY KELSO: We were like Mr. Dodd’s family. And there were times when we didn’t go home. We would be in the studio like two, three days. When Junior was leaving to come to America they were doing an album and for like, two, three days we would be in the studio. We didn’t have place to sleep. We didn’t even have no time to sleep. It was just fun in the studio. We would eat and we would sit down and get a little nap, you know. Sometimes I would run home and come right back.
ROGER STEFFENS: Over the years, Coxson has given several different variations on how long the Wailers were involved with him. Their recordings for him began in June 1964 and continued through late 1966, when they began their own label, Wail’n Soul’m, angered by what they alleged was Coxson’s financial mistreatment of the group.
COXSON DODD: I signed the Wailers as both performers and songwriters. The first contract was for five years. The second was for five, but they did about two of the second. We had a guardian sign the agreement for each of the three.
Bob boarded by me for at least four years. He stayed, I find boarding for him. Also, the others, the rest, when they came in and see what he had there, I had to open up the three-bedroom there and let them live there for a period of time. On Brentford Road. We had a three-bedroom at the back of the premises. They lived on Brentford Road for a number of years.
ROGER STEFFENS: Their tutor, Joe Higgs, began to feel slighted by his students, saying that they had used him and not properly acknowledged his crucial work in helping form the group.
JOE HIGGS: I think the first person who taught them to use people was Seeco Patterson. Why? I had had experiences with Coxson before, and I already excluded him from any association musically. Higgs and Wilson had done a chart-topper called “How Can I Be Sure” for Coxson. Years after that I come to do a song for Coxson again, called “There’s A Reward.” That riddim, that beat, was done by me in the same session the Wailers did “Lonesome Feeling.” Same people did the voicing on both songs, including one of my baby mothers, Sylvia Richards, along with Bunny, Bob and Peter and Cherry Green and Beverley Kelso and me.
The Wailers originally went to Coxson without me, because I was not going to tell them to go to Coxson—I didn’t want to go back somewhere I didn’t like. Seeco thought that whatever my problem was with a producer was not their problem, so he decided to take them to Coxson. When they made “Simmer Down” for Coxson, they must have got 120–130 pounds in that time.
[Calypso singer] Lord Tanamo taught me to protect your rights as a writer. I taught Bob Marley and Bob Andy, Derrick Harriott and all them guys. I’m angry because a lot of people didn’t know they could make money from that kind of angle, there was no knowledge among them about performing rights, and I was hearing this from Lord Tanamo and teaching it years after to other people.
ROGER STEFFENS: Despite the later disagreements and acrimony, Coxson Dodd was a crucial figure in the Wailers’ early breakthrough and successes. He backed them with his very best musicians, picked interesting songs for them to cover and actively promoted their records through his sound systems and on the radio.
COXSON DODD: I’m the one who selected all these foreign pop hits for Bob, the more meaningful ones. [These include covers of Tom Jones’s “What’s New Pussycat,” Dion and the Belmonts’ “Teenager in Love” and the Beatles’ “And I Love Her.”] There are no unreleased dubplates [single-disc pressings of unreleased material on soft vinyl, good for only a few plays] of the Wailers with me. But they did mime the records at yard dances. That’s how we got them launched.
ROGER STEFFENS: Engineer Dennis Thompson, who would tour with Bob during the final five years of his career, was an early supporter of the Wailers, playing their Studio One hits on his local sound system.
DENNIS THOMPSON: Me used to just fool around in the studio, mainly for the sound system, mixing dubplates. I had a sound system at that time but it had no name. You could never advertise the name. We knew enough people that we could get a crowd together. No need no name. And Bob would give me dubplates to play to check out the crowd’s reaction. I remember we previewed “Burial.” He played at a place called VIP. I used to run a system called Merritone. Every time we played at VIP, it crowded up. And “Dreamland,” we just played it and watched the crowd’s reaction. We used to program stuff. We played four records you know and stick one in between, brand-new, and watch you react to it without telling them it was the Wailers. We had a club called Lotus. [A merchant named] KG had just bought this big place in Halfway Tree, and didn’t know what to do with it. All they want is a record store, and we turned the back of it into this big discotheque. First discotheque Jamaica had ever seen. Coxson used to come down every Saturday night, 11:30. You see Coxson walk in with armload of dubplates. Duke Reid would send down all the stuff he recorded for a week, put on a reel-to-reel, riddim one side, vocals one side, and we dub it. Some people dance, used to turn off the riddim and they sing along. All them effects King Tubby do, I used to do long before that in ’66, ’67.
ROGER STEFFENS: Although Bunny Wailer would claim writer’s credit, “Dreamland” was a record by a group called El Tempos titled “My Dream Island,” given to them by Coxson to do over, composed by a man named Al Johnson. But the Wailers were doing more than covering songs; they were also writing original music. Junior remembers a collaborative writing environment; however, not everyone got the credit they deserved.
JUNIOR BRAITHWAITE: I wrote “It Hurts To Be Alone,” and for the main part we all assisted in the recordings, in all the other tunes, too. We had to do what we felt, we worked together. But then, surprisingly, most of the tunes didn’t come out written by the Wailin’ Wailers, but like Bob and the Wailers, even though we all participated in that as a group. But, at the time we really hadn’t expected no fortune and fame either. But I personally haven’t seen a dime of royalties after all these years. I consider all of them songs a blessing or gifts from the Most High, Jah Rastafari.
SEGREE WESLEY: In the beginning, I thought Bunny was the best writer. And the only reason why I would say I thought Bunny was—maybe now I’d say that—because Bunny was the only one I know that went to somewhat of a junior secondary school, more so than an elementary school. So, I know Bunny as a worker, he was the hardest worker musically and even though all of us always had a little pad that we write on, but, it was his dedication. Yeah. In
the beginning I thought Bunny was the best.
BEVERLEY KELSO: We just go in the studio and you know the thing about it, I never see Bob sit down with pencil and paper and write. I don’t know how we used to sing because he would just start singing the music, playing the guitar, Bob and Peter, just start playing the guitar. And they would come out there and say sing, sometimes I don’t even know the song, but we just start to sing. I never see Bob sit down. And, no really rehearsal—rehearsal, nothing. They just come up with a song and that’s it. Bob, Peter and Junior all contributed to the songs, they were all cowriters, they all shared. We’d just go in the studio and whatever have to be done we just sing right there for the band, right there and then, and they pick up and start to play the music. Bob would tell the instrumentalists what he wanted them to play. Or he would say do it in A this [A minor, A major, etc.]. We would, yes, rehearse some of the time. But just shortly before a recording. They would say, well, we’re gonna do this song, and you would sing this and you would sing that.
So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley Page 6