The title cut of the Wailers’ first LP with superproducer Perry, it rides a bulbous lead melody played on bass by session man Lloyd Parks and a sly one-drop groove from Wailer drummer Carlton Barrett and percussionist Uziah “Sticky” Thompson. “Stand Alone” - ‘Soul Revolution’ (1971)Īnother of reggae music’s defining early songs, this track also helped define Marley, the man.(Both versions are available on the deluxe edition of Catch a Fire.) The song also gave Marley his first taste of widespread commercial success, when Jamaican pop-soul singer Johnny Nash, of “I Can See Clearly Now” fame, covered “Stir It Up” and took it to the Top 20 in both the United States and England. Thanks to instrumental overdubs by outside players, including guitarist Wayne Perkins and future Who keyboardist John “Rabbit” Bundrick, the version cut for Catch a Fire was extended by two minutes on the finished album. It’s a testament to Marley’s guilelessness that he could get away with borderline-cheesy lines like “I’ll push the wood, I’ll blaze your fire/Then I’ll satisfy your heart desire.” The Wailers released a version of the song on their own Wail ’N Soul ’M label and re-recorded it in London in 1972. “Stir It Up” was written for his wife, Rita, in 1967, the year after they were married. This seductive vamp is arguably Marley’s most popular love song. But it’s the Soul Revolution version that remains most striking. “To the rescue,” he declares, “here I am!” Marley would rerecord the song in 1977 for Kaya, minus Tosh and Bunny, with the I-Threes’ sweet harmonies and new guitarist Junior Marvin’s piercing blues leads.
Marley’s brilliant delivery goes from utterly laid-back - the sound of being stoned in the sunshine - to that of a superhero loverman. Tosh provides the haunting melodica, and Carlton and Aston Barrett give the slow-motion, zero-gravity drum-and-bass groove. “Sun Is Shining” is said to have come to him after repeated listens to “Eleanor Rigby,” and indeed the song bears a faint echo of that Beatles melody. Ann’s, joined by wife Rita and his bandmates, to plant yams and cabbage and live off the land. The highlight of Marley’s second full-length album with Perry was written by Marley in 1967 after he moved from Kingston back to his rural hometown of St. Hear most of Bob Marley’s 50 Greatest Songs on Spotify. “His melodies take up a resonance in our minds, in our lives, and that can provide admission to the songs’ meanings… He was the master of mellifluent insurgency.” “Marley sang about tyranny and anger, about brutality and apocalypse, in enticing tones, not dissonant ones,” Mikal Gilmore wrote in 2005. His songs of freedom have become universal hymns. His artistic fearlessness and social commitment remain an inspiration to activists, musical and otherwise.
He is a cornerstone of 21st-century music, covered by countless singers, sampled and quoted by just as many hip-hop acts whose artistic DNA is shaped profoundly by the Jamaican music Marley defined. Marley’s stature and influence as a singer, songwriter, and international pop-culture prophet have only grown since those words were written. But, in fact, he was a man with deep religious and political sentiments who rose from destitution to become one of the most influential music figures in the last 20 years.” In the 1981 Rolling Stone obituary, Bob Marley biographer Timothy White wrote, “The pervasive image of Bob Marley is that of a gleeful Rasta with a croissant-sized spliff clenched in his teeth, stoned silly and without a care in the world. It’s being republished in honor of what would have been Bob Marley’s 75th birthday, February 6th, 2020. This list was originally published March 28th, 2014.
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