Bob Marley

Matthew Mays
Mr. Hedgpeth
English 1050-023
October 8, 2008
Bob Marley
Norval Marley, a white seaman from England, and Cedella Booker, a black Jamaican, only had one child (Gilmore 1), their son, Bob Marley was born Robert Nesta Marley (Romer), and although disputed by his mother, on April 6, 1945 (White xi). Cedella argues that Bob was born exactly two months earlier, in February (White xi). Cedella didn’t report Bob’s birth for fear of punishment for having a white man’s son (Gilmore 1). Bob Marley’s father died at the age of 60 due to a heart attack; it was then that Cedella and Bob moved out of St. Anne, Jamaica, where Bob was born, to Kingston, Jamaica (Romer).
When Bob and his mother arrived in Kingston they shared a room in a building on Nelson Street. Later they were able to move into Bob’s uncle’s house. While in Kingston Bob attended many schools: Ebenezer, Wesley, and St. Aloyius, but at the age of 14 Marley developed an apathetic attitude for schooling and dropped out. His mother says his friends were “rude-boys.” Rebekah Mulvaney defines rude-boys as “[…] rough and rebellious youths who reacted to Jamaica’s negative political and economic situation in the 1950s and 1960s by emulating Hollywood gangster characters.” In Kingston Bob began to make musical connections (Moskowitz 5).
Bob met Bunny Livingston, who lived in the same tenement yard. Bunny and Bob became best friends and began making instruments out of junk. They once made a guitar with copper wire, a sardine can, and a piece of bamboo (Moskowitz 5). Although Marley had a job in a welding shop, all he wanted to do was play music. Bob and Bunny spent all of their free time together working on their musical aspirations. The two of them trained with Trench town’s Joe Higgs.   Peter McIntosh, another Trench town youth, met Bob and Bunny while training with Higgs (“His Story”).
In 1962, with the help of local record producer, Leslie Kong, Marley recorded his first record entitled “Judge...