The baritone singer’s birth name is Neville Livingston
* He formed The Wailers in 1963 with late superstars Bob Marley and Peter Tosh
* Bunny was a good, conscious Jamaican brethren—Jamaica politician Peter Phillips
* Undoubtedly Bunny Wailer will always be remembered for his sterling contribution to the music industry and Jamaica’s culture
* While Wailer toured the world, he was more at home in Jamaica’s mountains.
* He enjoyed farming while writing and recording songs on his label, Solomonic
By Sharlene Hendricks, Associated Press in Kingston, Jamaica
Reggae luminary, Bunny Wailer, who was the last surviving member of the legendary group Bob Marley & The Wailers, died on Tuesday in his native Jamaica aged 73, according to his manager.
Bob, Bunny and Tosh as youngsters
Wailer, a baritone singer whose birth name is Neville Livingston, formed The Wailers in 1963 with late superstars Bob Marley and Peter Tosh when they lived in a slum in the capital of Kingston.
They catapulted to international fame with the album, ‘Catch a Fire’. The Wailers and other Rasta musicians popularized Rastafarian culture among better-off Jamaicans starting in the 1970s.
Bunny’s death was mourned worldwide as people shared pictures, music and memories of the renown artist.
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“The passing of Bunny Wailer, the last of the original Wailers, brings to a close the most vibrant period of Jamaica’s musical experience,” wrote Jamaica politician Peter Phillips in a Facebook post. “Bunny was a good, conscious Jamaican brethren.”
Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Andrew Holness, also paid tribute to Wailer, calling him “a respected elder statesman of the Jamaican music scene,” in a series of tweets.
“This is a great loss for Jamaica and for Reggae, undoubtedly Bunny Wailer will always be remembered for his sterling contribution to the music industry and Jamaica’s culture,” he wrote.
While Wailer toured the world, he was more at home in Jamaica’s mountains and he enjoyed farming while writing and recording songs on his label, Solomonic.
″I think I love the country actually a little bit more than the city,″ Wailer told The Associated Press in 1989. ″It has more to do with life, health and strength.
“The city takes that away sometimes. The country is good for meditation. It has fresh food and fresh atmosphere — that keeps you going.″
A year before, in 1988, he had chartered a jet and flew to Jamaica with food to help those affected by Hurricane Gilbert.
″Sometimes people pay less attention to those things (food), but they turn out to be the most important things. I am a farmer,″ he told the AP.
The three-time Grammy winner died at the Andrews Memorial Hospital in the Jamaican parish of St Andrew, his manager, Maxine Stowe, told reporters.
His cause of death was not immediately clear. Local newspapers had reported he was in and out of the hospital after a stroke nearly a year ago.
Early life and the Wailers
According to Wikipedia, Neville O’Riley Livingston, OM was born on April 10, 1947 and spent his earliest years in the village of Nine Mile in St. Ann Parish where he first met Bob Marley.
The wailers
The two befriended each other quickly as both both came from single-parent families — Bunny Lbrought up by his father while Marley by his mother.
Later, Wailer’s father Thaddeus ‘Toddy’ Livingston lived with Bob Marley’s mother Cedella Booker and had a daughter with her named Pearl Livingston.
Bunny had originally gone to audition for Leslie Kong at Beverley’s Records in 1962, around the same time his step-brother Bob Marley was cutting ‘Judge Not’.
Bunny had intended to sing his first composition, ‘Pass It On’ which at the time was more ska-oriented. However, he was late getting out of school, missed his audition, and was told he was not needed.
A few months later, in 1963, he formed The Wailing Wailers with Marley and friend Peter Tosh, and the short-term members Junior Braithwaite and Beverley Kelso.
Bunny tended to sing lead vocals less often than Marley and Tosh in the early years, but when Bob Marley left Jamaica in 1966 for Delaware in the US, and was briefly replaced by Constantine ‘Vision’ Walker, Bunny began to record and sing lead vocals on some of his own compositions, such as ‘Who Feels It Knows It’, ‘I Stand Predominant’ and ‘Sunday Morning’.
His style of music was strongly influenced by gospel music and the soul singer Curtis Mayfield and in 1967, he recorded ‘This Train’, based on a gospel standard.
In June 1967, Bunny was arrested on charges of possession of cannabis and served a 14-month prison sentence. Around this time he, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh signed an exclusive recording agreement with Danny Sim’s JAD Records and an exclusive publishing agreement with Sim’s music publishing company Cayman Music.
As the Wailers regularly changed producers in the late 1960s, Bunny Wailer continued to be underused as a writer and lead vocalist, although he was a key part of the group’s distinctive harmonies.
He sang lead on ‘Dreamland’ — a cover of El Tempos’ ‘My Dream Island’ which soon became Bunny Wailer’s signature song — also ‘Riding High’, ‘Brainwashing’ and on one verse of the Wailers’ Impressions-like song, ‘Keep On Moving’ (both produced Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.
In 1971, Bunny recorded the original version of ‘Pass It On’ and by 1973, each of the three founding Wailers operated their own label, Marley with Tuff Gong, Tosh with H.I.M. Intel Diplo and Bunny Wailer with Solomonic.
Bunny with Bob’s son Damien
He sang lead vocals on ‘Reincarnated Souls’ — the B-side of the Wailers’ first Island single of the new era, and on two tracks on the Wailers last trio LP, ‘Burnin’, ‘Pass it On’ (which had been cut as a sound-system only dub plate five years earlier) and ‘Hallelujah Time’.
By now Bunny was recording singles in his own right, cutting ‘Searching For Love’, ‘Life Line’, ‘Bide Up’, ‘Arab Oil Weapon’ and ‘Pass It On’ — a new recording of the Wailers song — for his own label.
He toured with the Wailers in England and the United States, but soon became reluctant to leave Jamaica. He and Tosh became more marginalised in the group as the Wailers attained international success, and attention was increasingly focused on Bob Marley.
Bunny subsequently left the Wailers in 1973 to pursue a solo career after refusing to tour when Chris Blackwell wanted the Wailers to tour freak clubs in the United States, stating that it was against his Rastafari principles.
Before leaving the Wailers, Bunny became more focused on his spiritual faith. He identified with the Rastafari movement, as did the other Wailers and he has also written much of his own material as well as re-recording a number of cuts from the Wailers’ catalogue.
He has recorded primarily in the roots tyle, in keeping with his often political and spiritual messages. He and Tosh would frequently sing each other’s background vocals in the start of their solo careers. The album ‘Blackheart Man is a good example of his roots reggae style.
Solo career
After leaving the Wailers, Bunny experimented with disco on his album Hook Line & Sinker, while Sings the Wailers reworks many of The Wailers songs with the backing of Jamaican session musicians, Sly and Robbie.
He has also had success recording in the typically apolitical, more pop, dancehall style. He outlived many of his contemporaries in a culture where death by violence is commonplace.
However, Bunny also had a dancehall/rockers edge that was best exemplified by the album Bunny Wailer Sings the Wailers in which he reinterprets some of the Wailers material as a solo roots singer backed by a Sly and Robbie based roots reggae grouping.
Some of his solo tracks are reworked classic Wailers tracks such as ‘Dreamland’ with slightly reworked lyrics that became Bunny’s signature song — recorded in 1966.
Bunny Wailer had won the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album in 1991 for the album ‘Time Will Tell: A Tribute to Bob Marley’ and in 1995 for ‘Crucial! Roots Classics’ and 1997 for ‘Hall of Fame: A Tribute to Bob Marley’s 50th Anniversary’.
He was also featured on the album True Love by Toots and the Maytals, which won the Grammy Award in 2004 for Best Reggae Album that showcased many notable musicians including Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Trey Anastasio, Gwen Stefani, No Doubt, Ben Harper, Bonnie Raitt, Manu Chao, The Roots, Ryan Adams, Keith Richards, Toots Hibbert, Paul Douglas, Jackie Jackson, Ken Boothe and The Skatalites.
In August 2012, Bunny Wailer received Jamaica’s fifth highest honour, the Order of Jamaica and in October 2017, he was awarded the Order of Merit (OM) by the Jamaican government, the nation’s fourth-highest honour.
In November 2019, Bunny received a Pinnacle Award in New York from the Coalition to Preserve Reggae and in 2016, he played a month-long ‘Blackheart Man’ tour to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his 1976 album.
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