by Rita Marley
When I was fourteen, Fat Aunty died, and her son, my eleven-year-old cousin Constantine “Dream” Walker, came to live with us. Since they’d lived only one street away, he and I had always been close, and because of the “Two Sisters” business we’d grown up more like brother and sister than cousins. Aunty had taught us harmony, and so Dream became my harmonizer, pretending to be the band. Evenings, in the yard, he and I performed together. Every song that played on the radio, we had it down pat. We listened to Miami stations that played rhythm and blues, singers like Otis Redding and Sam Cooke and Wilson Pickett and Tina Turner, and groups like the Impressions, the Drifters, the Supremes, Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells, the Temptations—we caught all the Motown hits. But if you lived in Trench Town then, you’d also hear “ska,” and even earlier kinds of music like Nyahbingi drumming and “mento,” with roots in African traditions—the way in the States you might hear soul and pop on the radio but also folk and blues from way back.
Sometimes Dream and I would put on a show and draw a crowd, charging people half a penny apiece. The people in the community, neighbors, other kids, the good, the bad—everyone looked forward to our “special entertainment” evenings. Even some of Papa’s musician friends came to hear us, people like Roland Alphonso and Jah Jerry. With Papa’s help, we’d made “pan guitars” from sardine cans. First, he nailed a flat piece of wood to the can for the fret board, and then we fixed strings onto it. Our “guitars” were small, but they worked!
At my school, the Central Branch government school on Slipe Pen Road, my name had been shortened from Alfarita to Rita because the teacher said it was too long for the register. At Central Branch nothing was something; we wore white blouses, blue pleated skirts, and blue ties, and considered ourselves fortunate. I don’t know how Aunty had even gotten me in there, because you were supposed to live in the area in the first place, as well as having a good family background and somebody or some school to recommend you. I was kind of far from all that, living in Trench Town with no mother and Papa being a carpenter and a musician with no established earnings. I think Aunty surely must have pulled some strings; probably she got a letter from some member of her political party, as she was the area representative. But I showed myself deserving of the chance. I always loved school, was always “a bright girl,” as my teachers said, not always by the book but by my common sense and quick pickup of the lessons. Except math. I tried my best and was very good at everything else.
Lunchtime, in elementary schools, different vocal groups gathered in classrooms to compete. At Central Branch I was one of the organizers, and if there was to be a concert—often just before a holiday—Mrs. Jones, my favorite teacher, would say, “Rita, we need some songs,” and she’d make sure I had time and space for rehearsals. I’d tell everyone in my group what to do, what parts to sing and when. And all the while I’m telling myself that one day I’ll be like Diana Ross.
In Jamaica, public education is free only through elementary school, and then you need money. After Central Branch I got a half scholarship to Dunrobin High School (Merle Grove Extension)—meaning that the government would pay half and the rest was up to the family—and I had just Aunty and my brother Wesley to support me. We had problems after a while keeping up with lunch money, books, and all the fees for this and that, until Wesley, who at the time was going to Walgrove College, decided to get a day job and pick up his own lessons in the evening. What a brother. He and Aunty were always behind me, convinced that I was to be someone, that there was something in me that promised this (even though Aunty doubted it more than once when my math grades were not what she wanted).
Wesley was the kind of guy who was always in school, but by the time I was seventeen I wanted to be able to get a job as fast as I could, so that I could take care of myself and stop depending on his income. And I felt I couldn’t continue to just live off Aunty. I didn’t have anything in mind about being a singer—in Jamaica you have to be realistic if you want to have any kind of a life. So when I left high school I went straight to the Bethesda School of Practical Nursing. And because the best recommendation for striving young girls was to get a secretarial job, I enrolled in night school at Papine to learn shorthand and typing. I had a boyfriend by this time, one of a pair of twins, who also liked to sing and with his brother was trying to create a Jamaican version of Sam and Dave. Evenings, after he left his job, he’d come for me at school and we would slowly, lovingly, make our way home.
And so, like many other girls of that age, I got sidetracked. I was waiting to start work in one of the big hospitals in Kingston, where you had to be at least eighteen, when I got pregnant. Teenage sex was such a shame when I was growing up, at least in Aunty’s opinion. I didn’t dare tell her, but morning sickness exposed me. “Why you spittin’?” she demanded. And eventually I had to confess.
This was one of the greatest sins I could have committed while under Aunty’s watchful eye. Everyone was disappointed in me. “Let’s take her to the doctor and get rid of it,” was the general recommendation. “Oh no, you can’t have it,” said the boy’s mother. “He’s too young, and you’re too young. You would never make it, you both need to go back to school.” She sent him to England, although he went unwillingly, because we were in love and he had been looking forward to being a father. After he left I decided to have the baby anyway, even though Aunty insisted that if anyone came to the house I was to get under the bed or stay behind the door.
I was frightened but brave when I gave birth at Jubilee Hospital to my first child, a girl I named Sharon. And it didn’t surprise me that after she was born she became Aunty’s child, the belle of the ball. As for me, my nineteenth birthday found me out of school and still waiting for that nursing job in the hospital.
Sharon’s birth didn’t change our home life much. Dream and I continued to get together to practice songs we’d heard on the radio; evenings we sang under the plum tree in the yard. Often he and I were joined by Marlene “Precious” Gifford, a girlfriend of mine who was still in high school, who would come by to play with the baby and fill me in on the latest gossip and keep me up to date on what was happening. She had a good voice, and with Dream we made a fine trio. One day, while we were rehearsing for one of our yard shows, I said to them, “You know, we could form a group.” It seemed as if everybody in Trench Town tried to sing or play an instrument or get a vocal group together.
At that time, the mid-sixties, everybody I knew was excited about a new Jamaican music known as “rock steady.” Our favorite stars were Toots and the Maytals, Delroy Wilson, the Paragons, Ken Booth, Marcia Griffiths, and particularly a group who called themselves the Wailing Wailers. The Wailers had recorded some rock steady singles in a studio in the Trench Town area near where Dream and I lived. Kingston had a number of small recording studios then, some of them just one of several businesses run by one person—Beverley’s Record and Ice Cream Parlor was one (its owner also sold stationery); another was a combination studio and liquor store. Studio One, on Brentford Road, belonged to “Sir Coxsone,” a man named Clement Dodd, who was an early supporter of Jamaican music and very important to its progress.
When I found out that the Wailing Wailers passed our house every day on their way to Coxsone’s studio, I told Dream and Marlene that we ought to meet them and sing for them. One evening when I looked out they were passing the cemetery, so the three of us ran out to wave. Looking at them—there were three of them, too—I thought, well, they look all right, I could be friends with those guys. Even though Aunty was always saying, “Don’t look out for that boy business, you already have one baby, so just be cool now, you’re either going to work or back to school or I’ll have to send you to your father—you’re not going to stay here and be an inconvenience!”
Nevertheless, I began to watch for the Wailers and listen to them on the radio, and one day not long afterward they stopped and waved back, and Peter Tosh, the tall one, came across the street while the two others leaned on the cemetery wal
l, strumming their guitars. Peter introduced himself—his real name was Winston Hubert McIntosh—and asked me how I was, and what was my name, and called me a “nice girl.”
“So you’re the Wailers,” I said. “And who’s that one?”
“That’s Bunny,” he said. “And the other is Robbie.”
“Hi!” I yelled across the street, all the while trying to think of a way to tell them that we could sing. Later I said to Dream, “Let’s try to practice that song ‘What’s Your Name?’ by Sam and Dave.”
The next time the Wailers came past and stopped to greet us, I said to Peter, “You know, we can sing a bit.”
And he said, “Well sing then, man.”
Aunty had been so strict with me since I’d had Sharon that I hadn’t even been allowed to talk to boys out of our yard. “Don’t make me feel like I’m an old woman just because I have a baby! I’m still young, I still can be happy!” I had yelled at her. But the rule was that I could only socialize over the fence, so when Peter asked, I opened the gate and stood half in and half out. And we sang.
The next day not just Peter but the one called Robbie came over. This time I was alone. He and I said hello, but he was shy, and I thought, oh, nice boy. Then Peter said, “You look like a decent girl, and it seems as if you can sing, so why don’t you let us take you up to Coxsone’s for an audition one of these days?”
That was an offer I needed to consider. Would those guys take me away and rape me? After all, Trench Town was full of risky, tough “rude boys,” and most of them could sing.
By then, though, a few of Papa’s friends were aware of our talent after having heard Dream and me in the yard. Andy Anderson and Denzil Lang were also friends of Coxsone, so one day they decided to pull some strings and take us up to see him.
All excited but a little nervous, Marlene, Dream, and I went to the studio—and there were the Wailing Wailers, who were surprised now as well as interested. It was great—we did a few songs, and then Coxsone asked Robbie to play the guitar for us while we sang some more.
I could tell it was important to all three of the Wailers to see that Dream and I were being raised strictly, that we had discipline from our house, that we had been brought to Coxsone by older men who knew music. Robbie in particular seemed to take that as something very positive. And I think he started to feel interested in me then. But that first day I was just freelancing, I wasn’t really concentrating on any special one of them. It was exciting enough just to be at Coxsone’s, where you see people you hear on the radio!
Did I have any idea that in a few short months this Robbie Marley, the shy guitarist, would become the love of my life? Did I suspect that he’d become a major force, world-renowned, an icon of musical history?
No! What was on my mind was Aunty’s warning: “Don’t you dare stay too long because you have to give the baby titty when she wakes up!!”
chapter two
WHO FEELS IT, KNOWS IT
STUDIO ONE HAD probably been a home before Coxsone bought it. He had taken down walls, but it was easy to imagine where the bedroom used to be and the kitchen and the hall. So you felt like you were at home there, because it was less like a business and more like a family affair. When anything happened, everybody got excited—the musicians, the singers, the man outside. And the hype was, “We do a hit tune today.” “We” meaning it was everybody’s hit tune. We would be there for days, nights, days, but nobody complained—it was just fun to wake up and say, “Oooh, I have studio today!”
Coxsone had recorded some of the most successful groups in Jamaica, including the famous “Skatalites,” one of the earliest ska bands. (The word “ska” comes from a certain sound made by the electric guitar.) Marcia Griffiths, who later sang with me as one of the I-Three, says that Studio One was Jamaica’s Motown, “where all the great stars grew … like a university you graduate.” A lot of times different people would be working at once; songs were being written in every corner. You couldn’t help but learn if you kept your ears open. Coxsone had a guitar that he loaned to those who were too poor to buy one. Bob had that guitar most of the time.
The backup group we eventually formed still consisted of Dream, myself, and Marlene, who would leave school in the evenings to come to Trench Town and rehearse, and whose parents thought this was the worst ambition. To leave high school to go to Trench Town, to be with those kinds of people—the tough guys, the killers, the thieves!
Dream was my main tootsie, my favorite cousin, my little postman, my little errand runner. As a baby, he had the most beautiful big eyes you’ve ever seen, and always looked as if he was dreaming—you know that sexy dreamy look? So from an early age Constantine Anthony Walker was known as “Dream.” He was only about thirteen, the baby amongst us, when we met the Wailers. They, being the Misters of Black Progress, who taught us that Black Is Beautiful and how wise it is to know yourself, decided that Dream was so much their little “buds” (buddy) that they had to change his nickname. Only old men have dreams, they insisted, but young men have visions. And so Dream became Vision. A much more youthful flavor!
We sang behind the Wailers and sometimes behind other singers or groups who were recording. Coxsone and some others on the scene suggested we name ourselves something like the Marvelettes, an American group we’d heard, and so we became the “Soulettes.” Our first big hit, with Delroy Wilson also singing background, was “I Love You, Baby.” This was a big, big thrill for us. We were unknown, we weren’t out there in the show business arena, and we were all still teenagers, starry-eyed amateurs.
It was also Coxsone’s suggestion that Bob train and rehearse us, and I guess by then he must have seen something happening between Bob and me.
He was pretty handsome, I thought—Robert Nesta Marley, Robbie to all of us then. Jamaicans would call him brown-skinned and Americans might say light-skinned. His father, Captain Norval Sinclair Marley, was an older white man, a native Jamaican who had retired from the British Army. Bob had much of his father’s imprint; he was very half-black, half-white, with a high, round forehead, prominent cheekbones, and a long nose. His mother, Cedella “Ciddy” Malcolm, was seventeen when she met Norval. He was more than twice her age, and was then the superintendent for British-owned lands in the rural parish of St. Ann, where Ciddy lived. By the time she was nineteen, she’d been seduced by, married to, and then abandoned by Norval. The one time he saw his father, Bob used to say, the old man offered him a “Willy” penny (an old copper coin, thought of as a collector’s item). Bob claimed he never saw Norval again.
But like me, Bob had an extended family to raise him, at least for a while. His grandfather, Omeriah Malcolm, was a myalman, or healer, as well as a successful businessman respected in his community of Nine Miles. So it didn’t surprise me that Bob, as the world would come to know, was very black conscious—his black consciousness covered his light skin. You see him, you hear him, and he’s a black man. And he was very disciplined, self-disciplined. Very real.
At fourteen he had come from St. Ann to Kingston with his mother, to live with her and a man named Thaddius (Taddy) Livingston, who had offered her work in his bar. Ciddy had a daughter, Pearl, with Taddy, but then found out he was already married and had other women besides. Looking for a better life, she took Pearl, who was still a baby, and migrated to Wilmington, Delaware, where she had some family and friends. Bob was left in Taddy’s care, but more like on his own. He told me that his mother’s plan had been to send for him in three months, as soon as she was settled and could secure the necessary papers. But the papers weren’t easy to get. The three months had become more than three years.
When we met, Bob was living in an uneasy situation with Taddy Livingston, Taddy’s common-law wife, and his son Neville Livingston, called Bunny, the member of the Wailers eventually known as Bunny Wailer. With his mother away, Bob lacked the kind of support and defense I got from Aunty. (One of his early songs is titled “Where Is My Mother.”) Taddy’s woman resented him, as the son of
a woman who had had an affair with her man. One day Bob told me how fed up he was with both Taddy and this “stepmother,” who wanted him to be her maid because he wasn’t bringing any money to the house. For a while he had simply become an errand boy, then worked as a trainee in a welding shop, before making his first singles, “Judge Not” and then “One Cup of Coffee,” on the Beverley’s label. That Bob was getting some attention didn’t mean he was being paid very much. No one had money then.
At first, and maybe always, I cared for Robbie Marley from a sisterly point of view. I was that sort of person, and still am—the responsible kind. I saw him and I said, “poor thing.” It wasn’t “I love him,” but “poor thing.” My heart went out to him. I kept thinking, oh, what a nice boy. So nice that I didn’t want to let him know I had a baby—in those days, for a teenager to be unmarried and have a baby seemed so shameful. During this time I spent many hours at Studio One, rehearsing and recording, and always managed to conceal that fact. But one day, right in the middle of recording, my breasts started to leak, and Bob noticed. He said, a little surprised, “What’s that? You have a baby?” It was not said unkindly.
Although I was terribly embarrassed, I couldn’t deny the evidence, so I just nodded.
And he said, “I could tell. Why you didn’t let us know? Why you didn’t ask to go home early? Is it a boy or girl?”
“Well, it’s a girl,” I said.
“Where is she? What is her name? Where is her father? Can I see her?”
All these questions came fast, with great concern. I stood there, looking at him, unable to answer right away. I found that concern to be very mature for a young man still in his teens—like caring and at the same time maybe seeing me through a different eye. His interest in my baby made me feel proud instead of ashamed. That to me was a good sign, but so unexpected. Finally he said, “Go home and feed your baby and I’ll see you later.”