There was a time not so long ago when you had to know how to venture into record stores to hope to find a few volumes of The Complete Bob Marley and the Wailers, 1967-1972. The case was important since it involved recordings of the first Marley. By first, mean before the signing of the Jamaican musician on the Island label which will open the doors to worldwide recognition before he disappears, taken away by cancer at the age of 36.
Thanks be given to Bruno Blum for having carried out the work of exhuming these tapes around thirty years ago, and for having been able to surround himself with Roger Steffens and Leroy Jodie Pierson to report, in this “discographic biography”, of the tremendous energies, inventiveness and fertility of this fundamental period in the history of reggae, that goes without saying, but more broadly of popular music.
The struggle before the triumph
Here are gathered the precious liner notes of the ten volumes of the collection, to which is added a long introduction on the incredible history of these recordings passed from mafia hands to businessmen hands, ignored for a long time before finally being published under the JAD label . Nothing less than a holy grail that we will not hesitate to place among the recordings of bluesman Robert Johnson or the collections of Alan Lomax.
With Marley in decline, confronted with the violence of his island as well as dreams of emancipation, but already at the peak of his inspiration, surrounded by the Wailers, (Rita, his wife, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer) as well as the legendary Lee Scratch Perry, a Dadaist producer who offers astonishing relief to compositions (and their dub versions) which carry the germ of the sound of a genre destined to conquer the world.
Bob Marley & The Wailers 1967-1972, Soul Revolutionby Bruno Blum, Roger Steffens and Leroy Jodie Pierson, Frémeaux and associates, 280 pages, 26 euros
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