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Bob Marley · S2 E6
The Wailing Wailers
Bob, Bunny, and Peter form a group. Coxsone Dodd takes a chance on three teenagers from the yard.
Three teenagers from Trenchtown stand outside a gate on Brentford Road, Kingston, waiting to audition for a man they've never met. His name is Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and he runs the most important recording studio in Jamaica.
"Roots, Rock, Reggae" (Bob Marley & The Wailers, 1976). The genre that started inside Coxsone Dodd's Studio One. Before Bob could make a song like this, he had to walk through that gate on Brentford Road and convince the most powerful man in Jamaican music to give three yard boys a microphone.
The Audition
Coxsone Dodd was the king of Jamaican music in the early 1960s. He ran Studio One, the island's first professional recording studio, and his sound system was the biggest in Kingston. Everybody wanted to record for Coxsone, and almost everybody got turned away. Joe Higgs, who had already recorded with Dodd himself, set up the audition and coached the boys on what to sing.
Sources
White, Timothy. "Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley." Henry Holt, 2006.
Bradley, Lloyd. "Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King." Penguin, 2001.
“Coxsone listen to them sing and he didn't say nothing for a long time. Then he say, come back next week. That was his way of saying yes.”
— Joe Higgs, paraphrased from interviews compiled in White, Timothy. "Catch a Fire" (Henry Holt, 2006)
Studio One, Brentford Road, Kingston
13 Brentford Road, Kingston: the home of Studio One, Jamaica's first professional recording studio and the birthplace of ska, rocksteady, and reggae. More hit records came out of this building than any other address in Caribbean music history.
TAP TO REVEAL: Why were they called The Wailing Wailers?
Roots, Rock, Reggae, Bob Marley & The Wailers (1976)
"Roots, Rock, Reggae" is one of the few Bob Marley songs that's literally about the music itself. The rhythm is a textbook one-drop groove, with the bass and drums so tightly locked that they sound like a single instrument. The guitar skank sits right on the offbeat with a precision that took years to develop. Listen for how the horns enter and exit the arrangement without ever cluttering it. Everything serves the groove. This is the sound that started in the same Studio One where three teenagers first stepped up to a microphone in 1963.
Sources
Steffens, Roger. "So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley." W.W. Norton, 2017.
The Deal
Coxsone's terms were standard for Jamaica at the time, which meant they were terrible for the artist. He owned the recordings, paid a flat fee per session, and gave no royalties. Bob, Bunny, and Peter had no leverage and no alternative, so they said yes. It was exploitation dressed as opportunity, and it was the only door open to three kids from Trenchtown with empty pockets and a rehearsed audition song.
Sources
White, Timothy. "Catch a Fire: The Life of Bob Marley." Henry Holt, 2006.
Bradley, Lloyd. "Bass Culture: When Reggae Was King." Penguin, 2001.
The Wailing Wailers: Formation
Trenchtown Rock, Bob Marley & The Wailers (1971)
"One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain." Bob wrote this years after the Studio One days, but the sentiment goes all the way back to the moment Coxsone Dodd said yes. Music was the way out of Trenchtown. Not the only way, but the cleanest one. And from the moment The Wailing Wailers walked into Studio One, everything pointed in one direction.
Trenchtown Rock, Bob Marley & The Wailers (1971)
"Hit me with music, hit me with music now." This is Bob asking for the thing that saved him. Not money, not fame, not politics. Music. The lyrics circle around that single idea: music as medicine, music as escape, music as the one reliable good thing in a place where nothing else was reliable. Read them knowing he wrote this about the yards where he, Bunny, and Peter first learned to sing, and every line hits like a homecoming.
Who set up The Wailing Wailers' audition with Coxsone Dodd?
The Wailing Wailers have a deal, a studio, and a producer who believes in them. Now they need a hit. Coxsone books them for a session in late 1963, and what comes out of it will go straight to number one in Jamaica. Next season: "Simmer Down," and the moment everything changes.
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To be continued
Season 3: Studio One
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