Bob Marley was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician, credited with helping to bring the reggae, ska and rocksteady music genres, as well as the Rastafari movement, to a global audience.

Born Nesta Robert Marley on 6^th February 1945 in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica, Marley started playing music at a young age. He left school at 14 to form a ska and rocksteady group with friends Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh, which would eventually go on to be known as The Wailers.

The band’s first album, entitled Catch a Fire and released worldwide in 1973, sold reasonably well. However, it was their second album Burnin’, which included hits like Get Up, Stand Up and I Shot the Sheriff which raised their profile considerably… particularly after Eric Clapton released his 1974 cover of I Shot the Sheriff. Yet, despite the newfound fame of the group, The Wailers decided to break up and pursue individual solo careers.

After the split, Marley continued to perform as ‘Bob Marley & the Wailers’, although with an entirely different backing band, and it didn’t take long for Marley to enjoy his first international solo hit – 1975’s No Woman, No Cry. And only the following year his second solo album Rastaman Vibration reached number eight on the US Billboard 200 charts, though only one single (Roots, Rock, Reggae) made its mark on the Top 100.

Marley spent the next two years living in England in virtual exile, yet managed to record two more studio albums: Exodus, which scored the four UK hit singles Exodus, Waiting in Vain, Jamming and One Love; and Kaya, which included the tracks Is This Love, Misty Morning and Sun Is Shining.

Marley’s final album was 1980’s Uprising, which included the hit Redemption Song. Three years earlier Marley had been diagnosed with skin cancer and he had become increasingly ill. He was forced to cancel his 1981 Uprising tour and finally succumbed to the illness in May that year. He was 36.

One final Bob Marley & the Wailers album, Confrontation, was released in 1983, two years after his death. It contained the previously unheard track Buffalo Soldier, which has now become one of Marley’s best-known songs.