A man who collapsed mid-jog in Central Park boarded a plane to Pittsburgh anyway. Two days later, on September 23, 1980, Bob Marley's legs gave out during a performance at the Stanley Theater. Doctors had told him to cancel the remaining dates immediately, but the singer flew to Pennsylvania and walked onstage for what became his final concert.
Roots in Nine Mile
Robert Nesta Marley was born on February 6, 1945, on his grandfather's farm in Nine Mile, Jamaica. His father, Norval Sinclair Marley, was a white Jamaican of Welsh descent who served as a private in the British Army but was known as "Captain." The man barely supported the family and died when Bob was 10. His mother, Cedella Malcolm, was Afro-Jamaican, and her father Omeriah, a myal healer, gave the boy his first musical influence.
Some records suggest the name at birth was Nesta Robert, reversed by a passport clerk. By age 12, Marley had moved with his mother to Trenchtown in Kingston, where he played music with Neville Livingston, later known as Bunny Wailer. The vocal group they formed went through several names: the Teenagers, the Wailing Rudeboys, the Wailing Wailers, and finally the Wailers. Joe Higgs taught them harmony and guitar.
Forming the Wailers
In February 1962, Marley recorded four songs at Federal Studios for producer Leslie Kong, one released under the pseudonym Bobby Martell. The following year, Coxson Dodd discovered the trio of Marley, Bunny Wailer, and Peter Tosh. Their single "Simmer Down" hit number one in Jamaica in February 1964, moving roughly 70,000 copies. By 1966, the Wailers had slimmed to that core trio, and Marley married Rita Anderson.
After the wedding, Marley spent a short stretch in the United States working as a lab assistant at DuPont and on a Chrysler assembly line under the name Donald Marley. During the 1960s he gravitated toward Rastafarianism and formally converted after returning to Jamaica. A financial dispute with Dodd pushed the group toward Lee "Scratch" Perry, whose collaboration lasted under a year but produced what many consider the Wailers' finest early work.
Island Records and Catch a Fire
In 1968, Marley and his wife visited songwriter Jimmy Norman in the Bronx. A three-day jam yielded a 24-minute recording where Marley experimented with pop textures. Four years later, he signed with CBS Records in London and toured the UK with Johnny Nash. That London stay led to a meeting with Chris Blackwell of Island Records, who advanced 4,000 pounds for an album. Catch a Fire was recorded in Kingston on eight-track equipment, then remixed by Blackwell with a more drifting sound and released in April 1973 in packaging resembling a Zippo lighter. Initial sales reached 14,000 copies.
Burnin' followed in 1973 with "I Shot the Sheriff," a song Eric Clapton turned into a hit. Natty Dread arrived in 1974 to positive reviews, and the live version of "No Woman, No Cry" from Live! became Marley's international breakthrough. Rastaman Vibration reached the Top 50 of the Billboard Soul chart in 1976, the same year gunmen attacked Marley at his home in Jamaica. He relocated to London and recorded Exodus.
Illness and final days
In 1977, doctors diagnosed acral lentiginous melanoma. Marley kept touring. He collapsed in Central Park on September 21, 1980, then ignored medical orders and flew to Pittsburgh for the Stanley Theater show. The cancer killed him on May 11, 1981, in Miami. Three months before his death, Jamaica awarded him the Order of Merit. He was buried in a mausoleum in Nine Mile.
Legend, the 1984 compilation, became the best-selling reggae release ever pressed, and total sales of Marley's recordings exceed 75 million copies. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted him in 1994, Rolling Stone placed him at number 11 on its list of the greatest artists, and he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award plus a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Pittsburgh show remains the last time that voice filled a hall.
The catalog never stopped moving. Legend keeps reappearing in new pressings, and the early Wailers singles with Coxson Dodd still circulate among collectors who track the Federal Studios sessions from 1962. Marley's final Pittsburgh performance sits at the end of that discography like a door left open, the set list from September 23, 1980, the last page of a story that began on a farm in Nine Mile.