Jamaican reggae singer, songwriter, guitarist, and bandleader. The son of a Jamaican farm girl and an Anglo-Jamaican agriculture inspector, he was raised in the rural parish of St Ann before moving to Kingston, aged seven, to be closer to his father. At 15 he was singing under the tutelage of established vocalists Joe Higgs and Desmond Dekker, and made his first ska record, Judge Not, as Robert Marley in 1960. In 1963, with Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston, he formed the Wailers, a harmony trio patterned after the Impressions, whose songs the Wailers covered before recording their own hits, Simmer Down (1964) and Put it On (1965) for the producer Clement Dodd. During the 1960s the Wailers evolved with Jamaican pop music through the rude boy, rock steady, and early reggae styles, working with the producers Leslie Kong and especially Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, whose rhythm section, Aston Barrett (bass guitar), and his brother Carlton Barrett (drums), was gradually absorbed into the Wailers.
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