Bob Marley's "Jamming"

Hey one song nation. This week we're revisiting one of our most popular episodes from the archives where we break down Bob Marley and the Whalers 1977 hit Jammin. So stay tuned for that and if you're in the LA area, come see a taping of one song live at the Skurbal Museum on September 6th. We're going to be breaking down the Ramones Blitzkrieg Bot with special guest, Brad Armason. You're not going to want to miss this one. So get your tickets at Skurbal.org, but first on today's episode, we're going to talk about Civil War and Jamaica, punky reggae and London. And of course, as always, we're going to hear the stems. That's right, the isolated drums, guitars and bass from the Whalers with the isolated vocals of Robert Nesta Marley himself. You may have heard this song many times before. You've never heard it quite like this. So let's break down Bob Marley and the Whalers Jammin. Luxury, my man, what's up? Hello, man, I'm having something. Nobody cares. Listen, welcome to one song. You do not want to hear about my day, okay? That's fine, I understand. Bob Marley is not called one day. It's called one song. You're talking about a song, not my day. It's not called a day in the life, man. Fair enough. Dude, the artists we're talking about today is quite literally everywhere. That's right, Tiao. Lately, we have seen this artist portrayed on the silver screen here in Hollywood. Mirals of him are painted all over the world. His poster is a favorite in college dorm rooms. At least when we were in college dorm rooms, we haven't to be clear. We haven't been in college dorm rooms in a long time. I have not recently been in college dorm rooms. Probably safe to assume that he continues to be an icon for stoners everywhere. And it's hard to verify his exact album sales, but it's estimated he's sold over 75 million records worldwide. He's one of the most popular musicians of all time. And his music is so universally loved and celebrated, it can at times seem a little bit too ubiquitous. That's right, luxury. Today's artist is so widely played that I sometimes wonder if we've really stopped hearing his music. Actually hearing it. That's a good point. Yeah, but all that changes today on this podcast because you're going to hear Bob Marley and his masterpiece jamming like never before. Now it sounds funny to say jamming. You could say jamming. Well, we've figured out we found out that there's a G at the end. That's the spelling, but what he sings is jamming. Oh, he says jamming, but I'm not going to do that because there will be no fake patois in this episode. I think dropping the G seems like a good idea, but you don't have to go all the way to the patois. We're going to be talking about jamming on this episode. It seems uncomfortable and cringy jamming. We're going to be jamming on this episode. I'm just trying to show my respect. This is one song. All right, I'm actor writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ and songwriter, luxury, also known as the guy who talks about and tickles me a little bit. I'm just such a fan of my new toy one more time. The guy who talks about interpolation. You know, shout out to all the people who have tried to give me a catchphrase. Yeah. A lot of people say I say shout out a lot. Give a top three or I think right now my favorite is somebody suggested it could be infuriating. Which is good. I didn't realize I say infuriating a lot. Oh, I thought it was a slam on me, but no, but like it kind of works on many levels. So maybe every time you say interpolation, I'll say, I'm furious. But when I use the sampler, yeah, those those watching on YouTube can see me visually die a little bit. Visually if you're aided, but we'll keep workshopping that. Okay, so Luxury, I want to start here. It's our thesis statement about Bob Marley's music and this idea that Marley is so iconic and it almost distances you from an artist that you think you know, but some of us have just not investigated as much as others. I think it goes back to these. You said it in the opening, like in my mind, I always think about being a student at Harvard and going into, you know, every dude's dorm room and they've got the legends poster up and, you know, and by the way, I'll say there's smoke and weed, right? Sclaim a right at the top. I have tried to do weed. It's just not every chemical for everybody. You know, we have that connection respond to it. I don't either fall right asleep. I was never a week guy, but there's an artist there and there's a reason why his music is globally powerful and globally popular and I think we just really need to listen to his music differently as Ziff for the first time. I think that's right. Bob Marley is iconic. He is a global cultural ambassador for Jamaica for the idea of revolution and resistance and politics in music, like he almost perfected that. It exists before him, but his entire body of work is a new version, a new level of bringing politics and love and rastafarianism and all of this together in this one body of work and is in his own. He's very important artists. We love him. He, like for all the reasons you just said, sometimes can be two people representing an idea very different from what the actual artist is, who the actual artist is. Well, can I throw out one more thing? We've said on the show before, like I really liked the cure as a kid and because I was in an all black school, I didn't know there was a whole like clothing style and a like a attitude that you had to adopt to be a fan of. You didn't know about Goth? I didn't know. Really. I mean, I saw a couple of movies. You're abstracted from Goth. What even is that? I saw a couple of movies in the 80s and I was like, oh, that looks a little extreme, but like I didn't let, because I wasn't around it, I didn't let the fandom of the artist sort of get in the way of my appreciation of the music. That's probably the best way. And I also have, and you're going to hear a lot about him in this episode. I don't even listen to the podcast. Shout out to my brother. He was a huge, he was a Rostafarian for over a decade and with Dreadlocks and the whole thing. And he had such a love of Robert Nesta Marley that there was no way that there was no way for me to like get into it without sort of feeling like, I'm just listening to Tony's music. You know what I mean? So I say all that just to say that that was sort of my barrier to the music, but now we're going to hear the music. We're going to talk about Bob Marley. We're going to talk about how specific and individual he was as an artist, like literally even in the genre of reggae to a lot of people. I think what we're referring to is this phenomenon that for a lot of people who aren't big reggae fans, reggae made to them mean Bob Marley, but reggae and Bob Marley are not one in the same big difference. He's a very specific slice and he's that was that major figure major figure major major we'll talk about another several of the major figures in his life. It's not an accident that Bob Marley appeals to so many white people in America because that was a marketing plan that succeeded. We're going to talk about that today and oh yeah, I can't wait to talk about that because the band themselves were stressed out about that. They would do the sold out. They do the sold out shows in America and they look out there. They'd be like where the black people cause the implosion of the first one of the first versions of the band ended because of that change. Totally. I would have made one note though to people like my brother. Hey, look, we have lots of facts for you as well. We always come into this episode with we hope sort of like information for people who don't know the artist that well, but also plenty of fun, wonderful facts that we hope that you have not heard before. We did our research for this. This one consumed so much time. We knew the movie was going to come out. We're going to talk about the movie. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippie setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue, just plump, dewy hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippie setting mist from Mavily New York. Maybe it's Maybelline. It'll be a little bit towards the end of the show, but for right now because there is a movie about Bob Marley's life that's out right now, and we're going to talk about that. But luxury before we get into the stems, I want you to give the one song nation the Bob Marley backstory. Let's talk a little bit about, as you said, Robert Nesta Marley. By the way, first thing to exactly building on what you just said, this little disclaimer at the top, this is the ultimate episode where, because it's such an oral history where different accounts are all different people have different stories. Different people have different stories that change over time. And we've both seen the documentaries. I've read a number of books. There's one in particular by Roger Stephens. I'd recommend called So Much Things To Say. But that 2012 documentary was great too. The bottom line is many stories are told from many angles, and many facts are disputed. And we're going to get into some of the disputes later on, because they extend to the music itself. And there's a lot of people who are crediting themselves with having written certain songs. And there's not a lot of agreements about it. You sell 75 million records. Yeah, they're going to be some losses where there's a hit. There's a hit as they say. Yeah, luxury. Before we get into the music, I want to give the one song nation just an idea of Bob Marley's childhood. He's born February 6, 1945 in the small, just a rural place, nine mile St. Anne Jamaica. I thought the hill, like he's literally rural on the hillside. First thing I thought I was like, Oh, Eminem 8 mile, Bob Marley 9 mile. If you're going to give Bertu a famous musician a legend, try and find a street with the word mile in the name apparently. They said he grew up among the Penny Wally's, which I think is like the most beautiful term I've ever heard for Fireflies. I never heard that word before. Like he grew up among the Penny Wally's. There goes a fake that's why I'm not going to do that. Oh, that's where it got. And they called him. They called him a red picnic. And I didn't know what that meant. The American equivalent of the red bone. In other words, he was light skinned. This is because his father was Captain Norville, Marley, a 60 year old British man who worked in Jamaica and met Marley's mom, a black woman, a black woman. She was, he can't call her a black woman. She was 16 at the time. Yeah. He was in his 60s. She was 16. They only knew each other briefly. But because of his parentage, he was what what they would call half. You know, the people recognized him as being mixed. And to a certain extent that made him an outcast, his uncles gave him more work to do with the horses just because, you know, to a certain extent they weren't sure how to claim him. And so in this just very rural setting, you know, Bob has his first exposure to music. They said that from the time he was a child, he would sing, you know, some of his favorite songs for people. And you know, they would beat on boxes, the Rumba box, and the banjo, you know, it's easy to forget. I always growing up in Atlanta, I always associated the banjo with that kid in deliverance. It's from Africa. I was like, yeah. It's an African instrument. And it only gained popularity in America in the minstrel shows where white people would adopt the affectations and obviously the black face of, and they would pretend to be black. And they would play the banjo. But somehow the banjo became associated with country rural white folks and I think, you know, we just might have moved on from the banjo. But Marley's playing all this stuff in Jamaica. And then at some point his mom moves from, you know, the mountains and this rural part. She moves to trench town. And this is a very formative time in Marley's life because, you know, there are more people here. And he talks about, you know, there were the bad guys, so to speak, you know, the gangsters for the lacquer boys. Yeah. But he's soaking all this in and people liked Marley and they said that, you know, he was a person who had a lot of charm, you know, right from the beginning, right in the early days of his childhood. Yeah. That's great. I mean, like the story of Bob Marley is the story of an outcast and really knowing his back story really helps you understand his music because he, as he says himself and as people say in the documentary, he didn't feel like he fit in with the white people or the black people. He wasn't fit in with his own family. He was very much an outcast and a rebel not by his own making. And he obviously channeled all that into his music. That's where he put everything. But he also got the impression that it was through his music that he was able to really connect with people. And then it was, it was through music that he was able to find his home and the black Jamaican community. Well, perfectly put, because we're going to talk also on this episode. There's a number of unsung, I would say, or differently sung cast of, there's a cast of hundreds that made Bob Marley's music popular. Yes. A handful of these people though very much seem like father figures when you read about them. So we're going to talk about Cox and Dodd. We're going to talk about Joe Higgs, Lee Scratch Perry. We're also going to talk about kind of an overly sung figure in my opinion, which would be Chris Blackwell, very controversial. Obviously made him a global superstar, the head of island records. But at the same time, you know, possibly took a little more credit than deserved. We'll talk about all these guys on this episode today. Yeah. So I'm going to set the stage. It's Jamaica. It's 1962. This is when Jamaica gets its independence from England. By the way, independence, but colonialism is still kind of the order of the day. Like it, racism doesn't end in Jamaica in 1962 just because of independence. But it is the beginning though of Scott, we've talked on another episode, go to our sister Nancy episode. It's sort of a sister episode to this one. We get into more depth about the origins of Scott into rocksteady into reggae, but it's important to mention this because the earliest music that Bob Marley is making is actually Scott music. And I'm going to tell you in 1962, in starting in 1962. So one character I mentioned earlier, an unsung hero in this story is Joe Higgs. He's known as the godfather of reggae by many. He himself was an early recording artist in the late 50s. He actually had a song in 1958. I'll play for you called many. Oh, this is one of the first records ever pressed in Jamaica. And it's worth pointing out how American R&B sounding that was because I thought one of the coolest things that I always knew just from my own background, my own love of Scott is that they were listening to the American groups and they were trying to sound like the American music. I love the fact that you know that there's a Bob Marley Virgil, why must I be a teenager and love? One of the things that we just heard is the gentleman who teaches Marley to sing. And at this point, Mr. Marley has met, by the way, he's being called Robbie at this point. He hasn't changed his name to Bob. So Robbie meets another young teenager, their teenagers, named Neville O'Reilly Livingston, who soon changes his name to Bunny. And Robbie and Bunny are taught to sing by Joe Higgs and they meet a third gentleman. I keep saying gentlemen, these are all young teenagers. And his name is Peter Macintosh, but is soon known as Peter Tosh, the three of them formed the whalers. And they were trying to figure out what their version of their dramatics and the impressions. Right, thanks. Yeah. And so they go with the whalers. Because these are vocal groups, by the way. They're not really playing instruments. This is all harmonizing. They're doing, it's basically do up the Jamaican version or just harmonizing like all the American acts are doing. Absolutely. I want to play a snippet by the impressions, a song called Man O Man, because I like to think that both Bob Marley and Young G'sy like this song. And for those who probably already guessed, that was sampled in the Young G'sy song. Beatrice Jay-Z, go crazy. I love sampling. Yeah, sampling is the best. The best sampling is always goes really hard. So and by the way, Young G'sy's talking about some, you know, street stuff in Atlanta. Meanwhile, we're in Trinch Town. Street stuff's going down. They're listening to the impressions, which is, you know, the music that Bob Marley and Peter Tosh and Bunny Whaler are working on themselves. And I just got to play this before we leave the year 1962. There's a snippet of the very first song to feature Bob Marley's vocals. There's a song called Judge Not and listen to a little bit of the lyrics because what's crazy is even though this did not, you know, fail to, you know, achieve a huge line of success for the group. He does predict what Bob Marley will be singing about later in his career, because you'll hear a sort of political message in it. This is Judge Not. Who are you to judge me and the life that I live? Who are you to judge me? I live. Bob is 16 here. Yeah. He's already feeling the scrutiny of. I know. He's already. Yeah. He's already looking at society and trying to find the hypocrites. Society's looking at him and he's getting harassed by the police, as he talks about. And like, yeah, he's feeling it and comes out in his 16 when he writes the song. It's crazy. The lyrics. By the way, someone tried to convince him at one point to change his name to Adam Marley, and he was like, no, I'm Bob. I'm Bob. Well, let's move on to 1963. At this point, Coxandod enters the picture. Coxandod is the legendary founder of Studio One, the first really important label in Jamaican music. So important to the sound system, so important to the eventual development of the DJ as we think of it today, like, you know, Coxandod. He's such a legend. He's such a legend. He signs the band, the Whalers, and their first single is called "Simmer Down." Now, this is a song that, when you hear it, you're hearing just the vocals of the band. It's the three boys, Peter, Bob, and Bunny. Along with three other members of the band, six total singers. The music is coming from the scat lights who are the Studio One house band, basically. And this is "Simmer Down" from 1963. ♪Simmer Down ♪ I love this story. So joyful. Oh, listen. I love the story that, when this song comes out, it's so popular in the dance halls that, like, keep replaying it over again. They just play it. Over and over. Like, other songs can't even get in the mix. Yeah. You know, that is a, you know. This song goes to number one in 1964. It's their first single with Studio One. Yeah. And it starts along, actually, five, six-year period, where they're making records for Studio One, but they're really not going anywhere, because the records are huge in the dance hall. They're huge in the dance hall. They love them at the sound system, but they're not being played on the piano. Nobody's playing them on the radio. And this is at a time when, like, you know, there's some straight thuggery in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Literally, those guys will show up at your radio station and, you know, basically say, you have to play this, like right now, or bad things will happen. It's worth mentioning the sort of gangster element, both of the record industry and politics, which is starting to simmer, simmer, simmer down. It'll get worse as the story progresses, and it is related to the story. The long story short about this era, and by the way, they're still called the Whalers. It's not Bob Marley and the Whalers. The Whalers stay with Cox and Dodd and Studio One. And they are making, according to Bunny Whalers, like, whopping three pounds a week. They're very frustrated. Yeah. They're not able to tour. They don't have any money. At a certain point, they get tired and they leave Studio One. And they go to work with our second under sung or unsung hero. And one of my favorite, if not my favorite, producer of all time, Lee Scratch Perry in 1969 enters the picture. Very important figure in Bob's life as a person person you've probably heard about, I mean, even if you're not into reggae, you probably heard of Lee Scratch Perry. You probably heard of Lee Scratch Perry. He had a very long career. He just passed away a couple of years ago and made probably a hundred, maybe 200 records, very prolific producer. He's an artist himself. You can hear him singing a lot of his artists, huh? A lot of his records. I want to say something about the Jamaican scene in general, because you've made me think about this. On this show, we're big fans of, they're very few people walking around saying, like, oh, sampling is an art and hip hop, that's the, that's the, that's how you don't hear very much anymore. But you got to put it in its context, like, Jamaican at this time is cranking out their own versions of all these American hits. right now. Maybe a couple of Britishers, but like so many. And in a weird way like that's that's sampling, you know, in a way that's like a doover. And it made me think that there's so much to be gained from rampant copyright abuse. Like yeah. If they weren't, no seriously, like if they weren't covering these songs and doing their own versions of these songs, you know, they might have eventually crossed over to the United States and just done what was happening over there. But because they sort of lived in this weird sort of like bubble, it led to, it's sad to say it seems like copyright abuse leads to some of the best stuff. But it should be said by artists didn't know that sampling would one day be known as art. They just were like, we want to move the dance hall. We want to move this crowd. And you're you're you're absolutely right. And it needs to be pointed out that there was literally no such thing as copyright law in Jamaica until the early 1990s. Oh wow. At the same time, there was something known as we know we're being pirated, you know, there was an awareness at times. And we're going to talk a little bit later about some of the conf-- the songwriting conflicts has not was alluded to. And they do exist for Bob Marley songs in a big way. But you're absolutely right. And I think about this a lot too. How Jamaican is kind of like a perfect little experiment. What happened if we threw copyright out the window for 20, 30 years and see what happens creatively. Wonderful things happen musically and creatively. Not such wonderful things necessarily on the finances side where the rich get richer and these musicians so many of them sort of die destitute. Yeah, the way owners were making a couple of pounds a week. Three pounds a week. Who was making money at studio? When was there somebody like an absolutely rich, so it's pop. If you owned a studio, then you made money. If you owned a sound system, Duke Reed, Cox and Dodd, all these guys, Chris Blackwell, who's about to enter the picture, it's the record labels and the studio owners. We're often one in the same. You know, we do this on the show a lot. We draw parallels. Cox and Dodd is sort of like what Barry Gordy was the Motown. Except Barry Gordy did have copyright law to deal with. And sometimes to like still artist off, in spite of the copyright law, but at least in America, there is the copyright law. Yeah, there's some protection. I think that, you know, and this is also a time I feel like Dodd is like, I love the story about how he's like, you guys aren't ready to perform yet. Like, he holds them basically back for two full years, saying you guys aren't ready to perform it. And these guys are like, I would have been their only source of income. No, I mean, like, seriously, I just, because they're not making it from the recordings. Literally they were. Guys, and I love the story that they were like so convinced that he might be right that like they might be too scared to perform, you know, live that they, they start performing for the ghosts of the cemetery. Yeah, I love that. If you can go to the cemetery and you perform, you're not going to be scared of living in the bowl, no matter how big the size of the crowd. So getting back to Lee Scratch Perry for a moment, I want to talk about how Lee Scratch Perry again in 1969, he's already an artist. He also has a number five record in the UK. And his band is called the Upsetters. And it's kind of, we were just talking about Motown. It's kind of like the Funk Brothers where there are a bunch of artists who come and go from the operation. So the Upsetters aren't just the same drummer-based player, keeper player, et cetera. They rotate. And he's unable to get a band to tour with him. So he finds a couple of brothers, the Barrett Brothers, who are two more unsung heroes of the story of Bob Marley. I was just learning about them, but man Carlton and family man. That's right. Carlton and family man, brothers and a rhythm section drummer and bass player asked in family man, Barrett is the bass player and Carlton is the drummer. And the two of them are in a band called the hippie boys. And when they learn that the Upsetters need a new rhythm section, they join up. So Lee Scratch Perry has the Upsetters with the Barrett Brothers in it. And this is when Bob Marley enters the picture. And he's just left Cox and Dodd. Not only does he need a new producer, he needs a new band. So this next chapter- -Rick, if I'm wrong, Lee Scratch had also worked with Cox and was also tired of some of Cox's business stresses. -Yeah, that's right. So he strikes out on his own- -They felt like they'd been through that ringer together. And so now they're joining outside of that. -That's absolutely- that's absolutely right. They're bonded in their disdain or in their frustration, I suppose. And striking out on their own from the confines of studio one in Cox and Dodd. So they make a couple of records together. And it's my contention that these are probably two of my favorite Bob Marley records. They are two of the lesser known records in the catalog because they are hard to find. They're actually not on Spotify. Their ownership is caught up in lots of copyright stuff because this is before Island Records comes in the picture. You can find the record called Soul Rebels. You can find the record called Confusingly Soul Revolution Part Two. There is no Part One. But these are two- these are the two records that Bob Marley and the Whalers made with Lee Scratch Perry on the- on the- -Free Island Records. -Free Island Records, he's the producer and co-writer on a lot of the songs. And this is the beginnings of the Barrett Brothers on bass and drums who stay with him his entire life his entire career. So I'd highly recommend you go out and check them out. They're much grittier. If you're a Lee Scratch Perry fan already, you'll find that they're very much in line with his catalogs like minimal stripped down. -I love the video footage of Lee and the studio because you just get this is exactly the greatest time. Like he's bouncing around. -I know exactly the footage you're talking about. As a lifelong fan of the band, there are only like two like clips of him unfortunately that seem to have survived from that era from the from the early 70s. -It's like me like Ad Harbour and I swear they're like pictures. Be happy kids that you can document every facet of your life because I'm always going to try to find pictures from the Ad Harbour. I swear I went you guys. I totally went to Harbour. -I believe you. I am going to need to see it diploma. -I don't have it. This is Small Acts by Bob Marley and the Whalers with Lee Scratch Perry. So that was the right chunk if you're a big tree and it should be said we were just discussing the whole leaving Cox and Dodd thing. That's actually taking those are shots fired at the big tree. It's a pun because the big three are Duke Reed, Cox and Dodd and Prince Buster. Those three sound system operators slash studio owners banded together to make a conglomerate called big tree records. And this is the big this is the song that you got a big tree but we got with a small small act. So they're united. -It's almost like a hip-hop disc record. -It is definitely a hip-hop disc record and it's the first thing that united. -First off, F big tree and that click you claim. Two pop kid him up. Anybody? Two pop. Tough crowd. So one more important thing to point out about Lee Scratch Perry's connection to Bob Marley. Now Bob Marley lived with Lee Scratch Perry for a while who sort of treated him like a son and we talked earlier about the whole father. -Because Marley's mom moved to the States. -Marley's mom moved to Delaware. -I know. -Bob joined him. -I could move anywhere in the United States. I'm going to Wilmington, Delaware. -Bob came out to try to join a prize like I'm not having this. I'm going to go back to Jamaica where it's there's sunshine and I don't have to work at the factory floor. I found a quote from so David Katz is the name of a writer of a reggae specialist in writer. He's written a couple of books when I highly recommend called Solid Foundation in oral history of reggae but he's also known as Lee Scratch Perry's biographer. There's a book called People Funny Boy. It's 400 pages long and I read the whole thing. He has this great quote which is very important about what's happening right now in 1969-1970 with both Lee Scratch Perry, Bob Marley and reggae as a whole. He says Lee Scratch Perry changed the reggae beat and he used the whalers as the vehicle for that and here's the quote from Lee Scratch Perry himself, which I will not do the patois, but picture a patois. When the people hear what I manadue, them hear a different beat, a slower beat, a waxy beat like you're stepping in glue, them hear a different bass, a rebel bass coming at you like sticking a gun. So this is a moment where we went from SCA in '62 to rock steady in '66-68 which is a little slower than SCA but it's not quite reggae and in this moment Lee Scratch Perry with Bob Marley and the whalers is helping to craft what becomes known as reggae proper or roots reggae and this is what carries us through the 70s and it's all happening right here in this moment and one more thing that Perry does which influences Bob Marley is his voice. This is a quote from Clancy Eccles, another famous Jamaican singer producer who said, Bob Marley never used to sing like how he sings now. He used to sing a different way but Perry used to sing that way. Perry is how Bob Marley sounds now and it's true if you go back to listen to some early Lee Scratch Perry, you'll absolutely hear the connection between how the two of them sing. So they make these two records with Lee Scratch Perry and then there's a falling out over Guess What? Money. As always, Bunny in particular is really fighting for getting paid fairly. Bob has sort of got a different mission in life and this carries through his entire life and career where he has a message to deliver and he ends up making money but it's never the primary thing. Bunny just wants to eat poor guy so there's a big fight they have a dispute at the, I've read this story several times from all of the different parties angles and apparently Bunny threatens to punch Lee Scratch Perry, they're to restaurant, they run out, they're running down the street, screaming at each other, whaling at each other, no pun intended. There's a second meeting where they try to make things right but then Peter Tosh thinks that there's like a bottle of acid that Lee Scratch Perry has brought and then he knocks it to the ground and apparently he starts smoking so it confirms that it was acid. Well, these are all different accounts of this interaction. I don't know what really happened but there was a very acrimonious and possibly dangerous split that takes place. Who brings acid to a business meeting? Maybe Lee Scratch Perry. If you know about this Scratch Perry, it's not that shocking. He may have actually done that. So that's the end of working together with Lee Scratch Perry and it's right around this moment that Chris Blackwell enters the picture. Yeah. Chris Blackwell is is a wealthy white gentleman who's from Jamaica. His mother is apparently, Ian Fleming, James Bond, authors, Mews. So he grows up and he's got like some bit part in Dr. No, I think, which is filmed in Jamaica in 1962. - Chris does? - Chris does, yeah. I think he's like a child in that movie. - Let's check it out. - So Chris Blackwell signed Jimmy Cliff, by the way, which is his first effort. This is really interesting parallel. He tried to make Jimmy Cliff another Jamaican star into a global superstar by sending him to muscle shows in Alabama to kind of inflect some American rock into Jamaica and did quite work for a lot of reasons. There's a great movie that comes out of this connection, which is the harder they come. - The harder they come. - Not just a great movie, but a great movie. Really fun. - We tried it. Sherman Showcase Fun Fact, those who know me, no, I did a show called Shaper Showcase. We wrote an incredible parody of the harder they come. Concerning our resident dance hall artist, Matt Walrus. And I just so maddened him come together because of COVID, we couldn't fly out the proper cast. - Season three, we need a season three. - Yeah, man, if we ever get the chance, we're definitely gonna do that one again, but I'm sorry, please continue. - No, I mean, let's pitch Sherman Showcase because that show needs a season three immediately. So the way they get connected to Chris Blackwell is that apparently Bunny Wailer tells the story. Again with the money, he believed he was owed money 'cause he was aware of island records and Chris Blackwell, the owner and founder, only because he understood Lee Scratch Perry had been selling their records in England, and somehow that was connected to island records, and somehow he'd never seen a dime out of it. So he's like, let's go meet this Chris Blackwell character and shake him down. Hopefully he's not bringing Amy Acid to the meeting, but like all these record labels, Bunny's already starting to get a little beaten down and frustrated. This is three times in a row. He's hearing about somebody else taking his money out of his mouth between Cox and Dodd and Lee Scratch Perry and now maybe Chris Blackwell. So they go to this meeting, they actually end up signing. This is the beginning of this next era of what we kind of, maybe the beginning of what most people know Bob Marley and the Wailers to be musically. Because Chris Blackwell starts to change their sound. He adds this, what he tried with Jimmy Cliff before, he's adding American musicians, he's adding cleaner productions, 24 track. The difference in sound before and after island is like two different bands. - It really is. - It really is. - And when I think about Bob Marley's music, I do think about that sonically separated, super clean low bass. Like, it's not the sort of scratchy, no pun intended Jamaican ska sound. Like, no, it's that stuff that sounded great. - That's right. I'll play a perfect example. This is one of my favorite songs. The original I should say, I prefer to the re-record. There's a song he did with Lee Scratch Perry called Kaya. This is Bob Marley, Kaya, the original version with Lee Scratch Perry in 1970. And here's that same song again as it was re-recorded for island records in 1978 for the album of the same name. This is Kaya, the much different, same song, extraordinarily different production. (upbeat music) ♪ For the rain is falling ♪ - I mean, what's interesting there, there are a couple of things. Obviously, it's mastered very differently. - Yeah, it's recorded and mixed on a 24 track. - Yeah. - And you have a lot of separation. There's multiple takes we're probably made. I would imagine knowing Lee Scratch Perry how quickly he produced records. They were probably like, boom. Maybe one to two takes at the most and then we're done and we're gonna move on to the next track. - By the way, I love Scott. You know, earlier, I'm sure somebody out there listening, they were like, he just said that other versions sounded better than the Scott version. Listen, guys, most of the time I was like listening to music as an adult, I probably preferred Scott to reggae because I'm a DJ, I like to dance. I like the grittiness of it. - It's faster. - You know what I mean? It's faster. And part of the reason why I never really got into reggae is because to me growing up, reggae always sounded like lazy Sunday afternoon. And if you know anything about me, Sunday's Sunday afternoon is one of my least favorite times of the week. I'm only looking forward to the week. - Is Sunday's scary? - Yeah, I just never liked relaxing like that. Like, you can give me a little bit of time. I wanna get hyped, I wanna get out there and like do stuff. And I remember somebody else saying that like, you know, Scott was the music that you dance and you drank with. And that's important here because in research of this episode it has become more clear to me than ever before. I thought of reggae as a political music, but it truly is a religious music. - Yes, the roster from Bob is major. We didn't mention earlier. He meets Mortimer Plano in the '60s. Mortimer Plano is one of these guys who's just he's turning an entire generation of Jamaican men primarily onto Rastafarianism. - Which is like a self-empowerment. - Yes, movement. - And it's about Africa as the homelands. - Beach, you know, one thing that you can't talk about Bob Marley without talking about Pan-African and sort of Afro-centric thought. And what it said was that, you know, Jai is in all of us, Jai being God. And that, you know, the black men of Africa was God and that Haley Salassi, Emperor of Ethiopia was, you know, Jai. - Yeah. - And that Jai is Rastafarian, you don't have, you know, part of it is really deep and intriguing. It teaches many things, including that, you know, don't wait on heaven, that the idea that heaven's the place you go out today to die is really convenient, you know, a really convenient philosophy for the people who are empowered right now. - Yeah, that's right, yeah. - Well, it's an anti-colonialist. - You'll get justice once you're dead. But for now, you know, you know, wax that floor, dude. - Rastafari comes directly out of the colonialism. It's a response to it. It's saying, no, stop waiting, you know. - Stop worrying yourself now. - God is a living man and Africa is your, you know, is your homeland and there's so many wonderful things about this. And literally that second coming is a black man. - It's literally a black man, I mean, there's the great story of when Hailey Selassie visits Jamaica and like people just run out and surround the plane. And it's crazy footage because that plane had propellers, I'm pretty sure, and like we were like straight up to the, and it's, and you know, Hailey Selassie gets out there and like he's been told that like he's a king, but you don't get the impression that he understood with that man. - Yeah. - Until he's standing on the, on the gang, what is that called the walkway or whatever it's called? And he's just like standing there for like a couple of minutes before he goes back inside the plane. - Gotta catch this crazy bit. - But then eventually they lead him through Kingston and he's waving in-- - But it's like the Beatles are in town, absolutely. - He's waving and he's making eye contact with people. Like Rita says, he looks straight at me. - Right. - You know, like it's-- - And then she saw his hand and she saw-- - Yeah, simple. - She said she saw a cross on his hand. I mean like you have to realize that Bob and the people that Bob was playing his music with, this is, this is their gospel. Like they, he felt like this music would travel the whole world because to him like this is, this is Pentecostal church, you know? - It's all tied together. It's freedom, it's power, it's the outcast status now has a, now has kind of a channel for being heard, being seen, having power actually, while proving powerless to having some power. - But it's also, the rest of our, we're not popular. You know, they were, it's not that they weren't popular. They were not so-- - They were so-- - They were feared. - In Jamaica, they were treated poorly. - Yeah. - And, you know, and here's, here's Bob and his crew. Like they're representing something that is political and religious and also catchy and taking over the dance halls and you almost want to see hip hop with all of its social cachet. Maybe do a little bit more of that, you know? Like it's interesting that there is rarely, as much of a, you know, a spiritual and political side in hip hop, at least since like, you know, the public enemy area, you don't see it that much. - It's hard, it's, they, Marley masterfully mixes. Marley masterfully mixes. - I love it. - Thank you. I could just stop there. - Yeah, you did. - That was perfect. - You did, you're peaking. - He's masterfully mixing politics with religion, right? Because Rostafari itself is mixing some Christian elements along with an Afro-centric-- I mean, for those who don't know, Emperor Selassie's name was Raaz Tafari. And there are other people whose name is Raaz, which essentially means King, I believe. But that's where Rostafarian comes from. - Exactly. - Also, the difference between those two songs you played, you notice in the loose scratch peri version, it sounds one way. On the 1977 version, you've got the itree. You've got the itree, which is Rita and two of his background singers. The reason Marley has Rita in his life, and honestly, quite a few women in his life, is because they see him as a prophet. They see him as somebody who is bringing the message of God. And, you know, we all know that rock stars have often had a wife and many mistresses. I found it so interesting to find out about Rita, who, you know, I didn't know very much about. Her story needs to be told at some point. Rita, she knows that there are other women in his life, but she's like he was too important. - Yeah. - She literally says he was too important, and I really wanted him to spread the message of God. So in her eyes, there's even a story about like one time, he called her and he was like, "Hey, I need you to get these people out of my room." And she goes up there and she's like, "All right, ladies, let's get out of here." And I'm just like, yeah, if you think your husband was, You know, that important that is. It's not about that, but it's about what we're bringing to the world. Like I found that really deep. She was clearly fully aware if maybe not all seven baby mamas for the 11 children he had. She was aware of most. And by the way, she was nice to all of them kids, which is also really incredible. Yeah. So by 1973, they're on island records. They release catch a fire, amazing record, but their market is a black rock act. You know, that's basically what Chris Blackwell thought would be the best way to sell them overseas. And they go to England and, you know, they're a little underwhelmed by the audience's reaction. They're playing the club circuit. They're playing these tiny little underground clubs. They're playing these tiny little clubs. It's important to note that, you know, Bob for all his, you know, Afrocentric views, he's still wants the music to go out and go wide and spread, but he and Peter are a little bit more militant than that, quiet out to just for the lack of a better term. They're just like, oh, enough, I get this. And right before the US tour, Bunny Wailer leaves the group. Yeah. And because he hears like, you know, some of the places they're going to be playing, he's like, oh, he uses the term freak show. He's like, I don't want to play these freak clubs. You know, he's like, I'm a religious man. Like, I don't do that kind of stuff. And it's not a fan of all the, yeah, I mean, like you even, you could even make the case to like a lot of the things that the hippies were into, like, you know, Bunny Wailer was not with them. And he leaves the group. And then they do the tour and for most of the tour, Peter is unhappy. And so as soon as the tour is over, Peter leaves the. Yeah. He just wants to be home in sunny Jamaica. He's tired of these winters, you know, the British winters and so on. Oh, yeah. No, they hate to the British winter. So Bunny and Peter, two very important members of the Wailers are now gone. And what does Bob do? Well, Bob builds a new group. He builds a whole new band. He recruits very importantly, what the I-3s, which is the name of the backup group. And they are a none of themselves an important part of the story. It's Marsha Griffiths, Judy Moat and Rita Marley herself are in the band, which means that Bob is touring the world with Rita. He replaces the Barrett brothers are still there. He replaces the other members. We'll name them when we get to the stems in just a moment. But this is the beginning of their rise to global fame. From 74 to 77, they go from these, you know, dinky clubs where Peter and Bunny are not having it. And they quit to rising to the top of playing 50,000 seed stadium aren't really after, but he and Peter leave that they start playing the venue. Right. They would have probably enjoyed playing. This is the global stardom that Chris Blackwell and Bob Marley together had strategized. It worked. The crossing over to they reached a white audience. They reached a global white audience. They're still not reaching a huge black audience. That's part of the story. We'll get to in a little bit. But this brings us into the song story. So if you're ready to jump into a jammin, now is a good time as any. All right. Out of the break, Bob Marley's jammin like you're hearing it for the first time. Welcome back to one song. We're about to play the stems for jammin. But first luxury. This song was written and recorded under tumultuous circumstances for Bob Marley and for Jamaica. Let me walk us through that really quickly. So in short, Jamaica had two political parties. One was called the Jamaican labor party. They were the conservative party under Edward Siaga. And there was Michael Manley, who had the more leftist people's nationalist party. I know that those people all because like labor seems like that would be the left of those. The opposite. J.O.P. versus P.M.P. And they basically had gangs. I mean, like they had these organized groups of people with guns shooting at each other in the streets. Lots of political violence in Jamaica. And Bob sees all this. And so he organizes the smile concert, 1976 to help bring people together. Now unbeknownst to him and Bob Marley, look, I think we can figure out a little bit of what it's politics were. But he often would say like, I don't necessarily support the government of Michael Manley. I think that both sides tend to use the people, I mean, sort of give what they want without truly helping the people. But he wants unity. He organizes this concert. It happens in December and, you know, I think sort of taking advantage of a situation. Michael Manley moves the election up towards the concert to make it seem like maybe Bob Marley is giving tacit endorsement to the P.M.P.s are riding high. And that increases tensions a lot. At the time Bob Marley had what was the equivalent of the Secret Service, which is called the Protective Service, looking out for them. One night, the Protective Service suspiciously doesn't show up. And Gunman run into his very famous home at 56 Hope Road and start firing off shots. And Marley and Rita Marley and some other people are shot, thankfully nobody injured. And they're all these people pointing fingers like the J.O.P. is like, oh, they were shopping out injured because, you know, the P.M.P. one sympathy. And the P.M.P. is like, no, the J.O.P. is working, you know, with Henry Kinsinger and the C.I.A. And they're trying to kill Bob Marley. Bob Marley bravely takes the stage just three days after being non-fatally shot and takes the stage. And he says he's going to do one song. He ends up doing a 90 minute performance and it's supposedly one of the greatest performances of all time. They're just 80,000 people, 80,000 Americans listening to Bob Marley, you know, in his prime. I can't imagine what that must have felt like. And after that concert, Marley is gone. He leaves the country. He starts off in Nassau and he eventually goes to London because, you know, to hear his friends say they were like, you know, he was injured. And he was just, he was emotionally hurt that something like that could happen in Jamaica. He didn't want to be bothered on that. He wanted to focus on the creation of his music. So he's been some time in London and it's during this time that he crafts the song that we have to talk about, which is jamming. Just on the topic of exile, because essentially that's what happens. He gets on this plane right after the concert and gets out, like gets the heck out of dodge. He leaves Jamaica for all of 1977 where he's living with the band in London. They all have their own floors on this, you know, apartment. And this is where they make the album Exodus, which is widely considered to be in my personal opinion. Outside of the Lee Scratch Perry albums, probably the best and most widely beloved Bob Marley record. It's the one with one love, the re-record three little birds waiting in vain. And the song we're going to talk about today, jamming. All of this is written during this London exile. Outside note, the B side of jamming is a song called punky reggae party, which is actually Bob Marley reuniting lovingly with Lee Scratch Perry. They have after five years of not speaking, after the acid moment, the acid incident, they get together and they do this B side. It's an homage to the punk rock movement that's happening in London at the time. They literally named drop the damned, the jam, the clash. They even mentioned the slits, although that was removed later because they were sexist and decided they shouldn't be name dropping a girl band, which is a little strange. In any case, the song jamming is written, they come back to Jamaica in time for this second concert, which is in April 1978. And this is called the one love concert. It's held at the National Stadium in Kingston. Very important thing happens at this concert. You want to tell us politically going back to that for a second, kind of an attempt at reconciliation I should say. Yeah, he brings the leaders of the two major parties, Manley and Ciaga on stage, and he has them shake hands. And then he takes both their hands and he raises them up. Really powerful moment. And the crowd goes nuts. There's footage of it. It's really powerful. It's really good. You see how uncomfortable these two white men are, too, which is really significant. Well, let's talk about that just a little bit. I, too, was just like, why are the two leaders of the parties white? They are not considered white in the same way that we consider white in this country. They are considered white Jamaicans, but it's not quite the same thing. For example, Ciaga, I think, is half Lebanese and his mom is mixed. And Michael Manley is too considered white Jamaican, not the same as white. So it's a very complicated thing. It is jarring. It is jarring. Visually. All these black people. Right. And their two leaders are, you know, look like Joe Biden and Joe Biden's brother. But it's, it's, it's, it's an interesting, it's obviously a holdover from colonization. But this song, jamming, was, you know, a major part of that one love concert. Well, that's the song that is being played when that moment happens. Yes. So it's the perfect entree into our discussion of the song and the stems, which is next up on one song. Actually, it's right now. All right, man. I'm excited for this. We've waited long enough. Let's get to the stems. What do you want to play first? Let's start with the drums. This is Carlton Barrett. I mentioned him earlier, one of the two brothers who were stolen from Lee Scratchberry, basically. One thing I wanted to just quickly talk about is how reggae drumbeats, there are three primary reggae drumbeats, especially during this era of the Roots reggae, 70s era, one of them, which is by probably the most defining one is called the one drop. Now you've heard this one and you knew immediately that it was a reggae song because it's literally where you don't hit anything on the one. The downbeat does not have a kick drum. So the kick drum comes on the two and the four. I'll play you some examples of that, so it'll make sense. This is crazy bald head, and this is one of my favorite examples because, again, the one drop is the absence of the kick drum on the one. That means don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, but you'll also notice that there's some really interesting stuff happening in the high hats. That's one of Carlton Barrett's specialties, it's just doing really interesting rhythms and patterns on the high hats. And it's dropping that downbeat, that makes you feel like you're kind of floating or like breathless for a second. And really, it's one of the two things that gives reggae music. It's regainous. That and the upbeat, the skank, happening on the guitar or maybe on keyboards or maybe both. - Yeah. - Between the two of them, that's how if you wanted to just make a reggae song, you'd start with those two things and you sort of build outwards from there. So the one drop is the primary reggae drum beat, but it's not the only one. And actually, jammin' does not use that one. It uses one called steppers, which is the kick drum is actually going on eighth notes, every beat. And you're still having a lot of play happening on the hi-hat. There's a third one, which is called rockers. And that is more of a kind of slowed down funk where it's boom, cat, boom, cat, which is made famous by Sly and Robbie a little bit in the mid-70s around this time. So Carlton Barrett here, we're gonna hear him play that second type of beat. This is a stepper's beat, which is what he used for the song jammin' pay special attention to how creative he really is with those hi-hats. They go between being straight and being swung. The song is swung, a little swing feel, but he's got some moments where he throws in some straight eighths. It's very interesting. (drum beat) - There we go. I like that. So it's very subtle. Do you hear the swing right? - It's the song swings, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, but it's very subtle to kind of go back and forth between the two and-- - It's so funny to hear that there are funk influences. Obviously, we hear with the bass. I never thought we'd hear it with the drums because funk is so much about hitting on the one. - Yeah, right, the one. That's the foundation. - And I think it's sort of not that, but-- - It's literally the opposite of James Brown's philosophy that you're referring to of the one is literally, this is the opposite of the one. On the one in funk in James Brown, the one is the most important beat. As long as you hit the one, you can kind of do anything until the next one. You can go crazy. - Your homework's done, the rest of the evening's yours. And think about the diaspora at this time because you've got Bob in Jamaica. You've got James in America and you've got Fala in Nigeria, so the whole diaspora-- - And they're all listening to each other. - And they're all listening to each other. - I mean, throughout the entire song, we've got that kick drum happening. And by the way, just for all of you music nerds out there, there is a lot of ways you can count time in reggae. I'm obviously calling those eighth notes, meaning my one, two, three, four is a one, and two, and three, and four, which would make it half time. It is a famous thing that you can count reggae measures multiple ways, but that's my definition. That's why I'm calling it-- - There we say, look, 60 is 120, 70 is 140. - That's right, it's all math. - Music math is a wonderful thing. Getting back to the one drop beat for a second. And again, this is steppers, not one drop, but sometimes Carlton is quoted as saying or other people attribute to him that he's the originator of one drop. I think one of his nicknames might have been wonny or dropy, I forget which. But he's not technically the originator. That's, this happens all the time in all forms of music and all forms of things in life. Who was the first ever to do it? But a lot of people say that Lloyd Nibb from the scat lights. And we heard them, by the way, earlier. When we heard "Simmer Down," that drummer was Lloyd Nibb. And you'll hear him doing this thing, which I'm about to mention, which is, besides potentially originating the one drop, being the first to think to do it. He also added a lot of these kind of neo-bingy African rhythms and kind of Cuban and Caribbean rhythms, basically. That are very similar to that high hat thing we just heard, how he was throwing out straight and swung and triplets. So I'm gonna play again the song "Simmer Down" and I'll point out the little moment where Lloyd Nibb from the scat lights in 1962 was doing a little something similar to what Carlton learned from him who was one of his protegeys, how to do with his high hats. He's about to play something on the bell symbol, which you'll hear, which is of kind of afro-cuban pattern. So notice that coming right after the horns play their part. You'll hear a little ding, ding, ding, ding, on the bell of the symbol, basically. (upbeat music) Love it. (upbeat music) - So that's just one of the influences that Carlton brought into his reggae drumming. - Also find it interesting that you know, these should make an artist have something called a one drop. When we know that in their sort of cast racial system, there was the idea that one drop. - I find that interesting too, and I don't-- - You're, by the way, manly and seeaga sort of use that to their advantage. - Right, right, which is its own troublesome thing. There is also very famous Bob Marley in the Wailer song called One Drop. So this idea of One Drop has multiple meanings, which I think is what that's going to be. - Yeah, all right, what's the next thing you want to play for us? - Well, let's go to Carlton's brother, Aston Family Man Barrett, on bass. - Awesome. (upbeat music) Throw the drums back in there for context. (upbeat music) Now, if you take those drums out, you really do understand the difference between half-time and full-on, because that could easily be like a house-based line, you know what I mean? But it would just be all "duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh." You can even do double-time. By the way, you wouldn't even have to necessarily change the cymbals. It's just because of what the kick is doing that it goes to half-time in your brain. Yeah, absolutely. It's context. It's everything. It's so awesome. There's not much going on in this bass line in terms of fills and melodic ideas, it's pretty much holding it down, the bass, it's all about holding it down and keeping it steady. There is a pre-chorus, and I'll play that for you just so you can hear some variety in the bass. And together, actually, it's interesting. You can really hear the swing that I was mentioning. Your parts where you're just listening to the drums, you may not feel the swing, but when that bass comes in, he is swinging the bass big time. So the combination is where you hear swing, not swing happening back and forth in this really interesting way. Now, as you know, I don't play a guitar, but I love the guitar part of this song. And I love the story about how tape delay sort of almost like invented this new sound. Right. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure. Well, I think you're referring to the skank, the offbeat thing. So there's two guitar parts in jamming, and I'm going to play both of you for them. One of them is Bob, and I believe he's doing the sort of basic skank that you're referring to. And that sounds like this. And I'll play that for you in context because where is the downbeat? That's the whole point of reggae. You can really throw you if you don't have context with other instruments. And it's all the answer. And what you just heard enter there, by the way, was junior Marvin, the second guitar player, the lead player, and the two of them are playing very different parts. The second one, the junior Marvin part, which is more of a like blah, blah, blah, blah. Sounds like it's got some wah, maybe some phase going on. It's more of a kind of soloing line throughout the whole thing. And that's a little bit of this non sort of native Jamaican influence, I would say. So your question about the whole skank thing, what you're actually hearing, you're referring to the fact that it is rumored that the earliest ska and rock steady songs where that skank offbeat thing was happening in the guitar might have been lintate, one of the early guitar players might have been Earl Wrangling, might have been somebody else. There's a story that gets told though that it used to get played just like I played it for you words, just that one note, the one chick, eighth note, and the story that gets told is they got a new piece of equipment that studio one that was a delay, which made that chick, chick. And nobody apparently knew how to use it. They were like, what is this thing? What is this thing? They turn it on. It was a delay. It was an echo. I might have been a role in space, I call. I'm not sure. So they turn it on and it takes those eighth notes into 16th notes. They go from chick to chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, there's just a little bit of a delay after each one. So that becomes the skank. They're both considered skanks, if you will. And I don't mean that in a disparaging way, I think that's literally what you call that upchuck. The upchuck also sounds disparaging. Look, this is just what you call these things, okay? Don't shoot the messenger here. You invented all these terms. And this is what it sounds like in context. A little bit later on you can hear more of that Junior Marvin lead guitar. He kind of starts to noodle a little bit more. I love it. It's just a little bit more of a delay. I mean, that is so soulful. So soulful. I love that. It's soulful and rocking. Remind us who that is. That's Junior Marvin on lead guitar. Junior Marvin, man. I believe he was not, he was not from Jamaica. Well, he's, I think he moved, he's, he is Jamaica. him, but he moved to London, and there's a fun story about how the year he joined the band, the same day he got the call. He also got a call from Stevie Wonder. And he had to make a decision. Now, the way we have a great Stevie Wonder story coming up, but let's stick with the stems. You have some great keyboards for us, don't you? I got some keyboards from Tyrone Downey. It's mixed a little bit with the percussion from Alvin Cico Patterson, and let's hear what that sounds like. And you can also hear some guitar actually, yes, in there I noticed. So there's a few different guitar parts mixed together. So let's hear a little bit more what we were just hearing, had a mixture of piano and organ. I'm going to play a part that has a little more of the organ isolated, and then you'll hear the i3's popping their beautiful voices in towards the end of it. I love it. The backing vocals are so gorgeous. Here's another moment. Let's give them their flowers. This is Marsha Griffith, Judy Mauet, and Rita Marley. And here they are. Background vocals mixed in with some keyboards in guitar. And I'll bring that back with all that Bob to that, just so you can hear how the harmony stacks sounds. So beautiful. I got to say it is amazing musicianship, an amazing songwriting, but it's not the song that we know unless we're talking about Bob's voice. But I think you just proved that. Play us some isolated Bob Marley vocals from Jammy. Here's Bob Marley, isolated vocals. You know, we we have to talk about the lyrics. That's one of my favorite lyrics. He says for those because again, it's easy to with his patois and all the music to not really grasp everything being said. He says, no bullet can stop us now. We neither beg nor we won't bow. Neither can be bought nor sold. We all defend the right. Jaja children must unite. Your life is worth much more than gold. There's so much to unpack. And I just want to unpack it. Just a little bit of it now and we're going to get right back. But like no bullet can stop us. In other words, like the violence isn't going to deter us. We neither beg, forget your money. Nor we won't bow. We're not going to be sick of fence. Neither can be bought nor sold, you know, money possession wealth again means, you know, not enough. Bob lived that truth. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Him and Stevie. I think, you know, let's talk about the request. Stevie Wonder and Bob Marley play a concert. And Stevie donates the money to charity. And that was so powerful to Bob. And I think that really affected it when, when, yes, when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and they threw out the colonizers. The Zimbabwe people said, hey, we come performance, perform for us. And, you know, his manager sent over the quote. They were like, we ain't got it. And Bob was like, okay, I'll use my own money so that the clock you mean like the fee. Yeah. He's like, well, just to move the band and everything to set up the venue. Bob paid that out of pockets because he he felt as important to be in Zimbabwe. I think he beat up his own manager too because he kicked him and his manager flew across the room. It's the beginning of the end for their relationship. That was sort of gone Taylor started to be on the outs. Absolutely. But, you know, the fact that he played that concert. And then, of course, there was, you know, there was a bit of a stampede and some tear gas. But it was important for Marley to finish that concert even on his own down where he wasn't making money on the concert. The African concert is complete with the tear gas. No, because you know what? Exactly. Play us some more vocals from Mr. Marley. I mean, again, this is this is gospel music. You know, it is revolution music. It is political music. But in Rastafarianism, the political and the spiritual go hand in hand. And he's singing about Holy Mount Zion, which I believe in Rastafarianism is not necessarily the place just outside Jerusalem. It's actually considered to be utopia. It could be it could be Ethiopia. But it's just supposed to be the utopia when everybody is treating everybody the way they should be treated. Yes, this is not a Zionist song like in the in the Israel sense of the word. Let's not say that. Let's not dip our toe in that. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I don't mean I can. I don't mean to Jewish playing it, but you can say whatever you want, but I don't know. We may not want to step into it. Well, but we're literally saying in the Holy Mount Zion thing. I mean, listen, I love the echo in reggae and in dub. Like to me, it's like such a defining feature. It's like outer space. Why? Why? It's so spacey. Yeah. By the way, this recorded in 1977 when Star Wars is coming out. Like, you know, like there must have just been something in the water where everybody in the 70s just wanted to go to space. It just seems like maybe it was maybe 2001. I mean, if you ever go to like the Jamaica band at the record store and you look at the like the dub records, they're all there's so many like Star Wars like cute, you know, illustrations done by hand and that sort of like very individual style where it's like, you know, Darth Vader mask and like there's definitely a lot of space in this happening. If you ever look at like scientist is another dub producer who worked with King, King Tubby and Prince Jammy. There's a lot of space love. There's a lot of love and a lot of love in this song. I really do love the lyrics in the song. We were talking about what's our Bob Marley episode for this season. We talked about this one because you know, he says we're jamming in the name of the Lord. Like, there's so much, if you think about the political context that he's singing into with the two leaders on stage, we're jamming in the name of the Lord. Jamming, by the way, there are a couple of ways to interpret the word jamming. Yeah. But I think the the safest way is to say, you know, dancing and having a good time, essentially, partying and, you know, they're partying in the Lord. And I think that's that's wonderful. I also think there's just a lot of great. We talked a little bit about some of the lyrics in this song. He's such a master poet. One of my favorite lyrics of all time is the lyric. In this great future, you can't forget your past. It's one of those wonderfully circular, like Lenin does a lot of that. It's simple, but it's profound. The way he delivers it makes it profound. It's simple and his clever reminds me, you know, I always go back to the the John Lenin lyric, "Baby, you're a rich man." You know, like I love anytime you can make that perfect circle. He's just, you know, he's just, he's great. And what's funny about a lot of these songs is, you know, being a part of the hip-hop generation, we didn't, I didn't know a lot of these were, you know, Bob Marley songs before my favorite hip-hop group interpolated. Oh, is that right? Absolutely. I mean, like, I think about, you know, everything's gonna be all right. And that, at first time I heard that was in the naughty by nature song. When it was "enterprise." Sorry, everybody in the world. That was louder than I expected. Really loud. But listen, sometimes you've got a whisper, but sometimes you've got a scream. So you're saying, "enterprise." That was the dub version. But no, seriously, I also think about, you know, his line about, I think it's from Trinch Town. One thing about music when it hits you, when it hits you feel no pain. It was used by a dead press in the song. It's bigger than hip-hop. And it was also used by another than Drake on one of his very first songs. The track is over. I mean, there's about, honestly, there's about 10 years between those songs and about 20 years between them and Trinch Town. So that's, you know, that lyric, which I never knew was an interpolation. It's pretty fun. It's a "enterprise." I'm really into it. It's your "enterprise." Thank you for playing me both of those "enterprise." I'm not sure which "enterprise." I prefer between the two "enterprise." That you just played. Thank you very much. Guys, stop him. Appreciate. Stop him soon. It's the one thing I do. Well, let's talk a little bit about samples and interpolations. What do you think? I think that's a great idea. Okay. Well, the song "Jaman" was sampled by the Jungle Brothers with Tribe Called Quest, the L.S.O. and Moni Love featuring Queen Lentifa. That's right. The entire Native tongues crew came together in 1989 for doing our own dang. I love it when they do that in hip-hop songs, right? Or in any song, when it's just like a little fragment from the lyrics. The tinyest bit. The tinyest little bit, and it reflects what it was just like mentioned in the lyrics. And then we go to just Bob saying "Jaman" because they just named Drop Bar Marley in the lyrics. - Yes, awesome. - And then this next one isn't a sample, it's an homage, but we alluded to Stevie Wonder and that connection between Stevie and Bob a little earlier. Big fans of each other's work, they played a couple times together. One time was the 1975, what was called the Wonder Dream Concert, which was actually the first time that Peter Tosh, Bunny Whaler, and Bob Marley were together on stage since 1973, when Bob, when they all went their separate ways. They came up for this one show, and it was the last time they ever played together. So Stevie Wonder brought everyone together for one last hurrah, and then a little bit later, Stevie Wonder does a song called Master Blaster, which is an homage, including a lyric or two that I will play for you in a second, that quotes the song, "Jaman," here I'll play it for you now. ♪ From the park I hear with 'em ♪ ♪ Marley's hot, turn the bus ♪ - There's the Marley. ♪ Tonight there will be a body ♪ ♪ On the corner at the end of the dark ♪ ♪ I didn't know you ♪ ♪ We'll be jamming 'em to the break, go down ♪ ♪ Sing 'em funny, and the future baby you ♪ - So, "Jaman" until the break adon, the song is gone. - One of my favorite Stevie songs, actually. - It's a great song. - And it also has that swing beat, the stepper's beat. - It's got the same stepper's beat that "Jaman" has. - Yeah. - The same kind of swing feel to it as well. - And I'm doing it to death by Fred Wellesley and the J.B.s. - Yeah. - That's got that, that's got that, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down. - That's a triplet feel, so it's like six, eight time. But the thing about swing and triplets is that they're connected. In a sense, now there's many different variations of swing. - Rhythm has all kinds of variety within, between the notes of the bar, but essentially, that, that, that, that swing, you can think of as being two of the three triplets. - Yeah. - That makes sense. - Yeah. So they are related. - I will say, Latch by, by disclosure has that. - It's a safe feel. - As a DJ, those are really hard songs to mix in and out of. - You kind of have to go into another one of them. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I remember one time I was like, I'm going to put all of them together and blow people's mind, but like, it can be tricky when you're trying to blend it and blend out of those. - Exactly. All right, so buckle up for this next one. This is not, I've got a little tale to tell you about one love. So there's a lot of complexity to the song "One Love" itself, the Bob Marley song. Has two versions. Let's start with that. It's first recorded by the Whalers, so with Bunny and Peter and Bob in 1965. And here that is. This is the original one love. ♪ One love, one heart ♪ ♪ Let's join together and have the long ride ♪ ♪ One love ♪ - So that's the original ska version of "One Love." And when we get to the verse, we have this melody, pay attention to the melody, and as you're listening, ask yourself what reminds you of something else. ♪ And I'm at best on you, don't fear a mad one love ♪ ♪ There is one question I really like to ask ♪ ♪ What's wrong with me, is there a place for the old lesson ♪ - Does that melody ring any bells to you? It's pretty close to this in my ears. This is "People Get Ready" by the Impressions, written by Curtis Mayfield. ♪ People get raises as a train of common ♪ ♪ You don't need no baggage, you just fear ♪ - It's just the shape of the melody is very similar. And in fact, that first version, just to set it all up, there are four different competing credits for this song across 50 years. One of them is that Curtis Mayfield is a co-writer of the song. In other words, that's an interpolation, interpolation. And he is giving credit for it. And some version of the world, he's getting some royalties in certain countries, who the hell knows. It is so complicated. I spent 20 minutes talking to my friend who was helping me research this. But in another world, "Coxin Dodd" has an ownership claim. It was re-recorded in 1977 for the version most people know. And that's this one here. ♪ One Lord, one heart ♪ ♪ Let's get together and feel all right ♪ If you've ever noticed, this song is called One Love/People Get Ready. Because when it was re-released, they did go back and credit and give 50% of the songwriting credits, it should be said. To Curtis Mayfield for that interpolation. In the original version two, but the original version does not give credit because of complexity of Jamaican publishing. It's such a behind-the-scenes quagmire of complexity. So there's a lot of different competing stories, a lot of people competing for the dollars, obviously coming from this song, but that's one love, is simplified as I could make it. There's more that I left out of it, but I'm going to leave you on one more fun note. If you're familiar with the song Buffalo Soldier, you may have noticed this story. Oh yeah, I know this story. Yeah, it's another song. Here's Buffalo Soldier. [Music] No, Jala, does that remind you of anything? Maybe something that I used to come on Saturday mornings. It's very, very, very, very, very similar to the song, the Trolla La Song by the Banana Splits, a late 60s kids show, basically, a bunch of very strange tour modern eyes like costume, kind of creepy costumes, like everything from that period, kind of creepy. Yeah. [Music] Now, I've heard, I mean, this story kind of reminds me of Rod Stewart going down to Brazil hearing something and not realizing, and I think that the story is that Bob was, was he touring America? Like, where did you get exposed to the Trolla La? He was touring America, so he had a friend named King Sporty who's to make it and to move to America. So King Sporty is a friend of Bob Marley who's who moves to Miami in the early 70s. He wrote the song Buffalo Soldier, and he produced the original demo, which I'll play for you now, by the way, this is fine. This is Bob Marley recording the original demo in Miami towards the end of the Kaya tour in 1980, and here it is. It's like, just 77? That's 1980, and it's like super cocaine disco. It's like disco. Yeah, it's, I never thought Bob would do disco. It's like high energy like Sylvester and super speedy disco. So this is a song that King Sporty wrote, and he's living in America. There was actually in like a BBC investigation I found where they were like, well, Bob Marley was never in America. And they basically, their conclusion leaves out the possibility that King Sporty was in America and definitely had access to watching the band and splits in the 70s as we did. So my theory is that, you know, I think it's such a direct connection melodically. The rhythm is the same. Yeah. Even the chord change is the same. So maybe it might be a case where King Sporty brought, you know, you know, I believe King sport and Bob had no idea who the trial laws were. I'm pretty sure that's right. King Sporty is credited. He gets 66% writing credits on this versus Bob. There's one more piece of the story, though, in case anyone's worried that the bananas splits are going to sue. The trial law song is credited to the TV show's music directors, these Mark Barkin and Richie Adams. But the person who actually claims to have written the song was a four higher jingle writer named N. B. Wincliffe. So he worked for the ad agency. I'm sorry. What was that name again? His name is Wincliffe. N. B. Wincliffe. He doesn't have B. That was he spelled the first name. It was like N. B. The letters N and B. Oh, I thought his name was like E. M. B. E. I was like, what a weird first name that is. It's still an unusual name. M. B. Wincliffe. He's N. B. Wincliffe's junior, by the way. His dad liked the name so much. Give it to him. So this is a gentleman who wrote the jingle under the auspices of being a salary employee for the ad agency, Leo Burnett for Kellogg. This is like the 60s TV weirdness with like ad agencies. Yeah, that's like Mad Men era. Yeah. Exactly right. So I think at the end of the day, it's probably, I'm going to go with that's the trial law song that was interpolated into Buffalo soldier. Yeah. Yeah, that's my theory. That's awesome. Now, luxury Bob Marley, one love, the Bob Marley biopic was released this year. It holds a 43% among the critics on Ron DeMitas, but this is interesting. The audience score is like 92%. That's like the people. The scapancies love it. Yeah. How did you like it? I thought it was really good. I have to say. Yeah. And this is the trouble where you see a biopic for someone you know a lot about. Yeah. That you, you really only, it's like the opposite. You see only the discrepancies. Totally. You really, you don't see the bigger picture because you're distracted by the things that aren't quite right. What was one of the inaccuracies or let's just say, you know, one of the changes that the people took a lot of creative life with. I mean, listen, I'm not the only one who noticed this, but there's a scene where we talked about Cox and Dodd. The scene where they go in and meet Cox and Dodd and they end up recording Simmerdown before they get to that point. Cox and Dodd shows up with a gun and he's like threatening them, which I don't believe happened in real life. I think what that really is is they're conflating two of the famous sound system operators of the day. Yeah. Cox and Dodd was one in Duke Reed was one of the other ones. I mentioned him before in the big tree conversation. Duke Reed famously was a cop who brought his gun everywhere. So my guess is that they decided, well, let's. They amalgamate it. Let's meld the Lord together. But that wasn't really Cox and Dodd's style, right? I think that was really Cox and Dodd and Cox and Dodd's children don't think so either because they're really pissed and they're threatening to sue or something like that. But yeah, they're out there vocally saying that's not our father. So one out of five starts. Well, for the Cox and Dodd depiction, I actually liked the movie because I loved love the story, love the man. And actually, it's kind of a coincidence that we ended up using this song, which is the centerpiece of the movie as well. The jammin' is, as we discussed on the episode, the two concerts where they're bookended by the smile, Jamaica, and one love is, that's also where the movie kind of takes over. - Yeah, totally. - So that was kind of fun to watch that in preparation for the episode. But like I said, that one little distraction shouldn't take away from what's in the wall. - No, it shouldn't, but you know, little details like that matter. There was one moment from the movie that got turned into a gif that got sent to me a lot. And it shows Bob Marley giving, I assume Chris Blackwell or his manager, that's, that's gonna be Blackwell. - I always laugh about that. - Gives him a fist bump. - Yeah. - And I'm like, wait a second, it's 19, it's early 70s. Like the fist bump was not a thing in the early 70s. - You know what I've been doing that time? - No, the fist bump, it's for the fist bump, but I don't know why, you even know this. It sort of starts with American Black GIs and Vietnam, but it doesn't become a thing that like everybody's doing until like the early to mid 80s. - A Jamaican man and a British man might not just be doing it. - It's just like little details like that will really throw me out. I mean, you look less like Bob Marley, look a little more like Bro Marley, but I'm gonna, I'm definitely gonna see the movie. - Yeah. - You know, but I'm a stickler like that 'cause I make, you know, TV shows or movies, I, they gotta get the facts from it. - I know, and sometimes you've gotta put in a lot of the like, exposition, right? All the facts have to go in. So you have to have a character that embodies five actual people or something. - Sure, in the interest of time, but like a fist bump, I don't know about that. - Deala, you're a writer and a movie lover from what I understand. Seems to me like musical biopics are often kind of bad. - No. - What do you think that is? - Like I said, it's just, it's like the, like there was a scene in straight out of Compton, which I actually think is a decent vibe. - I like that movie. - Yeah, I like that. But it's like I see like, "Hey, ice cube, what are you working on?" Oh, I'm riding the screenplay for Friday. Like I'm like, that conversation. - That exposition did not happen. - That's what I mean. They've got to put all the exposition in, like. Here's what I am doing right now. I'm wondering if you have the next part of my life. - At a laptop, but you know, I understand that, but there's a difference between that, like getting a detail wrong in some things that I think are just misguided from the start. I am not a fan of Clint Eastwoods, Charlie Parker, biopic Bird. - That was on my list, you see? - You don't think I should see it? - Well, no, watch it. - Oh yeah. - I don't know if you need to watch it. My problem with that is that I feel like they paint Charlie Parker as a heroin addict who happen to be a genius, not a genius who happen to use heroin. And I just think that, I think that's telling the story from a completely misguided piece. - Is it sending the wrong message? Like, heroin equals genius. - Well, I mean, there were enough jazz musicians who followed him down that road erroneously. But I also think that, you know, the story Clint wants to tell to me is not what made Charlie Parker special. So, Bird, not a big fan. - Okay. - Luxury helped me in this thing. - All right, well, I'm producer DJ Musicologist and songwriter Luxury. - And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, do you love Riddle? - This has been one song. If you've enjoyed the episode and you have, because you stayed all the way to the end, which means that you should go on to the favorite podcast platform of your choice. Give us the five stars. We have earned so clearly, possibly writer of you, and tell all your friends. But until then, we'll see you next time, and don't forget. - Interpolation. - And don't forget. - Interpolation.