Music / Reggae
Bob Marley’s Discography for Beginners
A guided tour through the work of the master of reggae
Interested in Bob Marley but haven’t dived beyond his obvious hits or the Legend compilation? You aren’t alone. Robert Nasta Marley is one of the most iconic performers of the 20th century, but I’m certain his estate sells more posters and shirts than they do albums. With the biopic One Love recently released, there’s never been a better time to get to know the music of the Tuff Gong.
I’m not here to judge or to gatekeep, but to communicate some of my enthusiasm for this artist and genre. The world needs more reggae, and Bob Marley is reggae’s juggernaut. So while no one should make you feel bad if you can’t “name five songs” to justify your One Love t-shirt, if you’d like to know more, read on!
I will divide Marley’s all-too-brief career into eras: The Early Years (1963–71), The Wailers on Island (1973), Trenchtown Solo Albums (1974–76), Pop Albums (1977–78), and Worldwide Rebel Albums (1979-posthumous). I have made up all these dividing lines and titles myself (and no one can stop me), but I think you’ll find them both accurate and helpful.
Disclaimer: Most of these links are Amazon affiliate links to the recent vinyl reissues. Buy physical media to support the artists, and use my links to support me!
Early Years (1962–71)
You might have noticed that Marley’s music is typically credited to “Bob Marley & The Wailers,” but this billing was a later development after Marley emerged as a star. In the beginning, the Wailers were a singing group — though Bob Marley was their most-often-used lead singer and songwriter, the Wailers were a proper band, not a backup band with second billing.
The first Wailers were a big, loose collective, but they eventually solidified into a trio of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer. (Bunny named himself after the band, not the other way around.) Marley was the obvious leader, but all three contributed to the songwriting process, and all three sang lead sometimes.
The Wailers recorded a string of singles for Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One through the early and mid ’60s. They had a falling out with Dodd, and Marley left Jamaica for a while to go work in the UK. When he returned, the Wailers cut a handful of songs with Leslie Kong in 1970, then two albums and some singles with Lee “Scratch” Perry in 1970 & ’71. They quarreled with Perry too and left to sign with a major label, the start of their next era. These early recordings are not exactly what you think of when you think “Bob Marley.” They start out in the fast-paced ska style of the early ’60s, and though they mellow into recognizable reggae by the ’70s recordings, the recording quality is not great. These are for-fans-only records — they’re incredible for understanding the roots and development of the Wailers, Marley, and Jamaican music in general, but they are not your best entry point. If you’re not already a reggae or Marley fan, skip ahead to the next section.
If you are looking to deepen your appreciation for Marley by hearing his first recordings, remember that 1: the ’60s records were recorded as singles, with no thought to an album experience, and 2: when Marley became a superstar, the copyright on these records was basically nonexistent, so a ton of unauthorized compilations (and sometimes mutilations) of these songs were issued by record companies looking for a quick buck. Approach with caution.
For the ’60s Studio One material, my favorite compilation is One Love at Studio One, a comprehensive two-disc CD set that collects all of these recordings in chronological order. A nice taster is the first “album” by the Wailers, The Wailing Wailers. This isn’t properly an album, but a compilation put together by Coxsone Dodd with no input from the group. Still, it was the first LP ever made of the Wailers’ music, so it’s worth a listen for that alone. Highlights include “Simmer Down,” the group’s first hit and a raucous party of a song, the original versions of “One Love,” “Stir It Up,” “Cry to Me,” and Peter Tosh’s “Can’t You See,” and a cover of the Beatles’ “And I Love Her.”
The 1970 Leslie Kong session yielded one album’s worth of songs, which Kong released a year later as The Best of the Wailers (which is not a greatest hits compilation despite the title). This later saw a wider international release under the title Shakedown, and has also been released as Soul Captives. Oddly, Peter Tosh is the star of this set for me — his songs “Stop That Train” and “Soon Come” made their debuts here, and “Can’t You See” got another recording.
The ’70s Lee “Scratch” Perry recordings turned into two albums initially: Soul Rebels and Soul Revolution Part II. Both have Perry’s fingerprints all over them and got mixed reactions from the Wailers themselves, but a little bit of Lee “Scratch” Perry is not a bad thing. They feature a minimalist sound — sparse rhythm instruments and no horns — that gives them a homebrewed, “garage reggae” feel. There are a bunch of singles from the Perry sessions not included on the albums, and a handful of them are great songs made famous by later recordings, so very much worth hearing. Two Trojan compilations present the full albums plus accompanying singles, so will serve the completist well: Rasta Revolution is the expanded Soul Rebels, and African Herbsman is the expanded Soul Revolution Part II. My personal favorite from these sessions is the original “Sun Is Shining,” a brooding song with a perfectly haunting melodica part (which I think but can’t prove was played by Peter Tosh) — a rare example of an early version that I think is better than its later re-recording. The originals of “Duppy Conqueror” and Peter Tosh’s “400 Years” also stand out. The Perry sessions are the most widely covered by bootlegs — if you find a Wailers record on a sketchy label, it was probably culled from Scratch recordings.
For a good sampler of all of the early recordings above, check out the Songs of Freedom box set (the original 4-disc version — there’s a new 3-disc version that totally skips these years). The first disc and a half offer a very nice overview of the early years, with liner notes that are worth the price of the set by themselves. Songs of Freedom also includes a single left off my above descriptions — in 1962, pre-Wailers, a 16-year-old Bob Marley recorded “Judge Not” and “One Cup of Coffee” for Leslie Kong. He sounds so young in them.
The Wailers on Island (1973)
1972 was a big year for international reggae recognition, especially in the UK. Jimmy Cliff and Johnny Nash became pop stars, and Marley and the Wailers capitalized by playing shows in the UK and getting themselves signed to Chris Blackwell’s Island Records. Island would be Marley’s label for the rest of his career, and (as much as I treasure the early recordings) the Island albums are where the real magic starts.
The Wailers made two albums in 1973. First was Catch a Fire, which was an international hit and made their names as stars. It was recorded by the band in Jamaica and sent to Chris Blackwell in the UK, who remixed it and added guitar overdubs by the legendary Muscle Shoals session guitarist Wayne Perkins — that crazy wah wah solo in “Stir It Up,” for instance, is his. The original Jamaican mix has since been released (you can hear it streaming in the Legacy Edition), but as much as I like the purer vision of the Jamaican mix, I absolutely love those extra guitar parts and prefer the Blackwell remix!
Catch a Fire is an essential reggae release that belongs in every collection. I already mentioned “Stir It Up,” which is easily the most well-known song from the album; equally essential are the socially conscious “Concrete Jungle,” “Slave Driver,” and “No More Trouble,” and the love song “Baby We’ve Got a Date.” Peter Tosh wrote and sang lead on two stellar songs, “400 Years” and “Stop That Train.” Bunny doesn’t get any writing credits and (if I’m not mistaken) doesn’t take any lead vocals. Many of the songs on Catch a Fire were re-recordings of tracks they’d already cut with other producers, but they all surpass their originals — this was a road-hardened band playing songs they’d been perfecting for years, and it shows.
Original pressings of Catch a Fire (with the zippo lighter cover that was too laborious to keep making) credited the album to The Wailers. By the time of the first repress, the group had already broken up, so the newly designed cover featured Bob Marley on his own smoking a spliff and the name “Bob Marley & The Wailers.” The confusion about what to call the band persists.
The Wailers wasted no time capitalizing on their success and released their followup, Burnin’, later that same year. Catch a Fire gets more attention, but I think Burnin’ is the stronger record. It’s got two of the band’s most immortal songs, “Get Up, Stand Up” and “I Shot the Sheriff.” The latter was famously covered by Eric Clapton, but the Wailers’ version is so much better it’s laughable. For my money, the album’s best song is “Small Axe,” an inspiring rallying cry for the downtrodden many against the downpressors. Peter Tosh takes lead on “One Foundation,” a worthy song and highlight of the album; Bunny Wailer uses his silky, high voice for two, “Hallelujah Time” and “Pass It On.”
Both of the original Wailers’ Island albums are classics that balance political messages and having a good time. They make wonderful entry points into the catalog if that’s what you’re looking for, and any way you slice it, no reggae collection should go without these records.
But like so many bands before them, success brought tensions in the Wailers to the fore. Bob was the obvious star, and the label treated him as such, limiting Peter and Bunny’s roles to make sure Bob could shine. Peter and Bunny had no intention of spending their careers in Bob’s shadow, so when it became clear that they couldn’t go forward as a band of equals, they left to pursue solo careers — first Bunny, then Peter — shortly after the release of Burnin’. The breakup of the original Wailers marks the start of a new era.
Trenchtown Solo Albums (1974–76)
Bob Marley became, effectively, a solo artist, though he billed himself as Bob Marley & The Wailers. It’s a bit like if, after the breakup of the Beatles, John had continued to record as “John Lennon & The Beatles.” To replace the harmonies of Bunny and Peter, Marley added a permanent group of female backup singers called the I Threes: Judy Mowatt, Bob’s wife Rita Marley, and the already-legendary-in-her-own-right Marcia Griffiths. (Seriously, listen to Bob & Marcia’s version of “Young Gifted and Black” or her later Steppin’ — essential reggae.) Logically, this meant that the title of “The Wailers” that used to refer to the three singers could now only describe the backing band of musicians, since Bob Marley and the I Threes were explicitly outside the group name.
Marley released two studio albums and a legendary live album in 1974–76, and all three are united by their hook-filled songwriting and very authentic themes. I call them the Trenchtown albums because these are albums firmly rooted in the Jamaican ghetto Marley hailed from. Local shout outs and references to street life abound.
First was Natty Dread in 1974, which contains “No Woman No Cry,” one of Marley’s most famous songs (albeit in the live version from the next album). Much of Natty Dread is occupied with rebellion and popular unrest: “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)” and “Rebel Music (3 O’Clock Roadblock)” are rallying cries against wealthy politicians and police states, and “Revolution” is one of his finest ever songs, a hypnotic anthem of social change and Biblical doom.
Touring for the album brought Marley to new heights, and a show in London was captured on 1975’s Live! This has been described as the greatest live album ever recorded. I don’t quite agree, because that’s indisputably James Brown’s Live at the Apollo, but it’s high on the list. The extended version of “No Woman No Cry” on this record is the definitive rendition, drenched in bitter nostalgia and emotion. You also get “Trenchtown Rock,” an excellent song that doesn’t appear on any of the Island studio albums — it hadn’t been recorded since the Lee “Scratch” Perry sessions. The other songs are fantastic but not significantly better than their studio versions.
1976 was a banner year for the former Wailers. Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer released their solo debuts: Legalize It and Blackheart Man respectively. Both are just as essential listening for the reggae fan as Marley’s discography. Bob Marley, for his part, released Rastaman Vibration, which built on the strengths of Natty Dread and was his biggest success yet in the US after years of primarily UK-centered support.
“Roots Rock Reggae” was the big hit of the record, and “Crazy Baldhead,” “Want More,” and “Rat Race” are all excellent socially-minded songs. “War,” which became a concert staple, is completely constructed from Marcus Garvey quotes about racial justice — they were just as true in the ’70s as they were when Garvey said them in the ’20s, and unfortunately they are equally true today. My favorite song on the album is “Johnny Was,” a heartbreaking song about the mother of a victim of gun violence.
This era ended with a bang, quite literally. By the end of 1976, Bob Marley was a superstar. And though he was touring extensively, he always came home to Jamaica and tried to put his money and influence to use to help his struggling homeland. In December of 1976, he was set to headline the Smile Jamaica concert, a big outdoor show against political violence. Marley declared himself politically neutral, but because the concert was sponsored by the party in power and came just before an election, the other party took it as an endorsement. Two days before the show, gunmen broke into Marley’s house and shot him, his wife, and two of his band’s employees. No one died, and Marley refused to be daunted: he took the stage two nights later with an injured arm. He only promised one song, but wound up playing for 90 minutes, Rita singing in her hospital gown because she had just been discharged.
But the assassination attempt changed everything. Marley left Jamaica and set up his home base in the UK, and his next albums are the products of his exile.
Pop Albums (1977–78)
In the UK, Marley’s sound broadened. His next two albums, Exodus and Kaya, sound nothing like the reggae being played in Jamaica at the time — they’re indisputably reggae, but they’re also something much more expansive. They integrate elements of mainstream rock and R&B, widening their appeal to a more general audience. They are, in a word, pop.
Don’t take the term “pop” as an insult. These are two of the greatest reggae albums ever made — their broadness allows them to both transcend and define their genre. And they exist because Bob Marley had to uproot himself from the violence of his homeland and expand his worldview. But he never forgot his roots — he remained true to himself and the place he had come from, even as he made records for the whole world instead of his neighborhood.
Exodus (1977) is reggae’s Sgt Pepper, a front-to-back classic that expands and transcends the boundaries of the genre. Of the 14 tracks on the Legend compilation, 5 come from Exodus. Side 1 is the socially conscious, activist side, and Side 2 is the party side. The one-two punch of “So Much Things to Say” and “Guiltiness” are rallying cries against downpressors that wouldn’t have felt out of place on his earlier albums, but they feel more global, less specific. “The Heathen” is a head-expanding track that benefits from a rock influence. And the side-closing, epic-length title track is the closest Marley comes on these albums to addressing what happened to him in Jamaica. The Exodus he sings about is the (in Rastafari belief) hoped-for exodus of the African diaspora away from Babylon back to a decolonized Africa, but it’s hard not to link the song to Marley’s own departure from the violence of Jamaica to the relative safety of London.
Side 2 is the party Marley your friends want to put on while you smoke. We start with the timeless stoner anthem “Jamming,” then slide into two incredible R&B love ballads, “Waiting in Vain” and “Turn Your Lights Down Low.” As if that wasn’t enough crossover appeal, the side ends with the two reggae songs you’re most likely to hear on commercials or pumped out of the speakers while you shop for jeans: “Three Little Birds” (“Don’t worry about a thing/‘cause every little thing’s gonna be alright” — if you never realized this song was called this, don’t worry, you’re not alone) and “One Love.” They’re overplayed, for sure, but there’s a reason they’re so popular. That Bob Marley could put out such beautiful, optimistic music mere months after being shot for singing about peace says a lot about who he was.
Marley followed up in 1978 with Kaya, which was actually collected from extra material recorded during the Exodus sessions. Both albums are suffused with material originally recorded by the old Wailers in Jamaica, but with the new, slow, ganja-soaked atmosphere of late ’70s reggae. Kaya is another home run, and album as true to Marley’s roots as it is broad and commercial. But most of the socially conscious songs wound up on Exodus — Kaya is a gentle album about love and ganja, a continuation of Exodus’s Side 2. Standouts include “Is This Love,” “Satisfy My Soul,” “Easy Skanking,” and “Crisis.” I also have a soft spot for the last two songs, “Running Away” and “Time Will Tell,” which are lazy, shuffling sorts of songs that feel like the album drifting off to sleep.
Kaya was a commercial success but got mixed reviews from critics, who were skeptical of the album’s laid-back feel contrasted with the more strident tone of his earlier work. It’s probably true that if this were the only kind of album Marley ever made, I wouldn’t be anywhere near as big a fan. But as an entry in his discography, it’s a beautiful departure. It’s an escape record: Marley had just temporarily extracted himself from a tumultuous political world that had gotten him shot. Kaya is a peaceful oasis, and that’s not a bad thing. However, Marley seems to have taken the criticism to heart. His next records will be the exact opposite of Kaya as he plunges himself back into the milieu he spent a year and a half away from.
After Kaya comes a second live album, Babylon by Bus, documenting the 1978 Kaya tour. It’s a good record worth hearing after you’ve worn out his others, but it’s not the revelation that Live! was.
Worldwide Rebel Albums (1979-posthumous)
In April of 1978, Marley made a triumphant return to Jamaica with the One Love Peace Concert and built his own new recording studio to make his next album. His return to Jamaica marks a return to political activist music, but his worldview had grown. Where his earlier records were about the local struggles of Jamaicans, this batch has a global perspective.
1979 brought Survival, which I place high on my list of favorite Marley records and which has no representation on Legend. The album is totally devoted to the struggle of Africans and Black people worldwide (it was originally going to be called Black Survival), as represented by the cover: a then-current catalog of African national flags (including some not internationally recognized at the time) surrounding a diagram of human cargo aboard a slave ship. “Africa Unite” expresses a utopian, Rastafarian wish for African self-rule, and the ballad “Babylon System” excoriates the colonialist mentality that destroyed the lives of Africans. “Ambush in the Night” finally directly addresses the assassination attempt in 1976, presented as an instance of the evil system turning brothers against brothers.
But perhaps the album’s most stirring song is “Zimbabwe,” an anthem written on behalf of the rebels trying to liberate the country then known as Rhodesia from British control. The message reached those rebels, who apparently sang Marley’s song in the trenches as inspiration. When the UK pulled out of the country at last, Zimbabwe invited Marley to perform the song at their independence celebration, which he did with gusto. (The fact that Zimbabwe then quickly devolved into a corrupt postcolonial state rather than the African paradise Marley hoped for certainly colors the song interestingly, but lord, if I said everything I wanted to say about that I’d have an entirely separate essay.) On his way to Zimbabwe, Marley was in the airport at the same time as then-Prince Charles, who was headed there to collect the royal standards to bring home. Charles sent assistants to speak to Marley — he liked Marley’s music and wanted to meet him. Bob Marley said if Prince Charles wanted to meet him he could come to him, but he wouldn’t be summoned. They never met.
Where Survival was a record about politics, Uprising (1980) was Marley’s religious album. Jah and Marley’s devotion to Rastafari had certainly been a prominent feature of his music since the beginning of the ’70s, but Uprising features prominent Rastafari themes in just about every song. The biggest song from the album was “Could You Be Loved,” which was a calculated attempt to cross over to the US R&B charts — Marley’s success in the US had been primarily among rock fans (read: white people), and he very much wanted to get Black fans to his concerts there. The song is incredible and, if he’d have lived longer to pursue the market, I’m sure he’d have succeeded. “Coming in From the Cold” is also pretty essential, and I’m quite partial to “Zion Train,” “Bad Card,” and “Work.” The album closer is legendary: “Redemption Song” is presented with just Bob singing and strumming his guitar Bob Dylan-style. It does make you want to wave a lighter in the air, but personally I prefer him with his band.
Shortly after Uprising, Marley was given his cancer diagnosis and spent the rest of his too-short life trying many different avenues of treatment, from real medicine to, uh, “alternative” treatment. He died in 1981 at only 36.
But there’s still one album of note to hear. In 1983, his estate released the posthumous Confrontation. I didn’t listen to this one for a long time because I’m always skeptical of posthumous albums, but the massive single “Buffalo Soldier” clued me in that there were good, fully realized songs on there. Confrontation doesn’t sound like something cobbled together out of demos and outtakes (even though that’s what it is) — it feels like a well-thought-out follow up to Uprising. If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d swear it was another Marley record made with his full involvement. It absolutely deserves a spot with the rest of his Island records. It’s got big singalong rockers (“Jump Nyabinghi,” “Blackman Redemption”), beautiful slow numbers (“Trench Town”), and even a strange kind of disco crossover in “I Know,” one of my favorites. A fitting cap to an incredible recorded output.
The Reggae G.O.A.T.
Reggae is a genre dear to my heart, and though there are many, many artists who have done and are still doing incredible work in the genre, there’s little denying it: Bob Marley is the king. I hope he won’t be the only reggae artist you come to love — don’t fall into the mainstream trap of equating him with the genre. But he’s an artist worth the time it takes to do a deep dive, and one that repays relistening and research.
So turn up the record, partake if you want to partake, skank if you want to skank, but especially give thanks and praises to the greatest reggae artist who ever lived.
More music writing:
