Contributed
From left: Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh.
Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer
On the lower right hand corner of Roger Steffens and Leroy Jodie Pierson's 'Bob Marley and the Wailers: A Definitive Discography' is written two words. Collector's Edition.
The 177-page book is, whether from the standpoint of being collectable as a comprehensive text or as a guide to those who are trying to bone up on recordings involving Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer.
There is, of course, the continuation of the cardinal sin of separating Marley from the Wailers (Tosh had some choice comments about that) in the title, but the three smiling pictures of the faces to the three hands on the Tuff Gong imprint on the cover say many more words than the name of the book.
I am willing to bet my one battered copy of Legend that it is a selling point more than anything else.
available details
Bob Marley and the Wailers: A Definitive Discography contains the available details on every single recording on which Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh and Bob Marley ever sung lead or harmony on. And they are many, beginning with Judge Not and Do You Still Love Me, recorded around February 1962, and ending, for the purposes of the publication, with Bunny Wailer's 2004 three-disc spoken history of The Wailers.
As Pierson writes, "The book includes all issued recordings, unreleased studio recordings, well-recorded rehearsals, sound system specials, informal composing tapes, well-recorded live shows, live shows of historic interest, live performances on radio and live performances on television programmes."
However, as Steffens writes in the extensive foreword, "This book is not totally accurate. Any discographical study of the Wailers that purports to be the 'definitive' or 'final word' on the group's
ourselves? It's an ongoing discussion and this is the opening salvo, the first draft of many, as we add to the knowledge and debate the details".
Fair and modest enough.
The details given about each song are impressive, including the original record label the song was done for, the musicians, the engineer and, very important for music collectors, the original record labels and what are called 'matrix numbers' (those who really need to know know what those are. Everybody else just buys records, OK?).
Apart from the information on the songs, though, Steffens and Pierson tell sub-plots to the Wailers' music through their notes or larger stories, in fact. So we see Judge Not being recorded on one-track equipment at Federal Studio; two-track comes in at Studio One by April/May 1965 for Love & Affection. Four-track is in for Peter Tosh's The Toughest at Studio One in May 1966, but eight-track did not feature until 1972, when Bunny Wailer sang lead on Searching For Love at Dynamic Studio. Things moved along pretty quickly after that, as Road Block (Rebel; Music) was recorded on 16 track at Harry J Studio in 'early 1974'. The leap to 24 track came with Tosh's Mystic Man in late 1978, at Dynamic Studio.
run-ins with producers
Interestingly, although Bunny Wailer is often portrayed as the most calm and philosophical of the three, it is he who had the run-ins with the producers. By the second Wailers recording session for One Cup of Coffee he had earned the enmity of Leslie Kong, when he was late getting out of school for a recording session Kong had already paid for. Years later, when Kong put out a Best of The Wailers set and Wailer promised him a bad fate the producer laughed and shortly after dropped dead from a heart attack at 38.
Then there was the matter of Wailer refusing to continue touring, in the days of my youth credited to his refusing to go on the 'iron bird'. As the Definitive Discography has it, some time after a live set at BBC studio on May 24, 1973, "Chris Blackwell's remark that the Wailers would play 'freak clubs' on the upcoming American portion of their tour convinced Bunny that he should return to Jamaica and let the others go without him".
Add to this a physical attack by Bunny Wailer on Lee Perry over record royalties, as written in the book's notes on Bob Marley.
And do you know those renditions of Concrete Jungle and Stir It Up from BBC's The Old Grey Whistle Test? The songs were recorded before and during the filming, the vocals were done live, but they pretended to play their instruments.
The first son of Marley to be mentioned in the book is Damian, for the drum programming on the 2000 remake of Concrete Jungle.
While the Definitive Discography is chockfull of written information, the pictures are also very telling. A 1964 picture of the three, a knee up, hand on chin and smiling, is hard to reconcile with a picture of them striding down a road in Kingston only seven years later, tight-thighed, bell-bottomed pants on, well on the way to Rastafari.
album covers
Then there are the pictures of album covers that run throughout the album, as well as pictures of people such as Coxsone Dodd at Studio One in 1976, Chris Blackwell with the first two releases in 2004, Lee 'Scratch Perry', band members Aston Family Man Barrett and Carlton Barrett, as well as Allan 'Skill' Cole flanked by Danny Simms and Joe Venneri, a late 1960s Wailers producer.
The pictoral piece de resistance for me, though, is 12 extra glossy, black background pages, each with pictures of 24 vinyl single and album records. They make for an impressive display, where record labels of old and revered memory (and a few present) live once more.
And Peter Tosh's personality comes out with a cartoon of him using a mallet to pound a stake into the chest of an 'ol vampire' in a coffin for Hammer Dem Dung.
Geof Gans must be credited for the fantastic layout and the writers must also get kudos for making the effort to define terms such as 'screwface' and 'maaga dag'.
Bob Marley and the Wailers: A Definitive Discography is published by LMH Publishing Limited.
