February 6, 1945 - May 11, 1981
Marley was very generous with his money. He was known to help out those in need around the Kingston area of Jamaica, where he lived, including many friends and family.
Marley was born to Cedella Malcolm, an 18-year-old Jamaican woman, and Norval Marley, a much older white man of English descent who worked as a land overseer; Bob barely knew his father and was raised mostly by his mother.
As a teenager in Kingston, Marley dropped out of school and took a job as a welder's apprentice before deciding to focus on music.
What's Bob Marley's legacy? Asked that question on the Off The Record podcast,
his son Ziggy replied: "Who he was as a person is his legacy. Hardworking, disciplined, focused, truthful, humble, loved. He was a people person."
Long before Jamaica became independent in 1962, big sound systems blasting American R&B and local ska records were the way poor Jamaicans heard music. Marley came up in that scene as reggae took shape in the late 1960s.
Bob Marley died in 1981 from acral lentiginous melanoma, a rare form of skin cancer that began under the nail of his right big toe after a football (soccer) injury in 1977. Doctors recommended amputating the toe (and possibly more of the foot) to stop the cancer from spreading, but Marley, guided by his Rastafarian credo against removing parts of the body, refused amputation and instead had a more limited surgery that preserved his toe. Over the following years, the melanoma spread to vital organs including his brain, lungs, and liver/stomach, leading to his death at age 36.
His nickname was "Tuff Gong." He set up a record label called Tuff Gong Records.
There is a Bob Marley museum on Hope Road in Kingston, Jamaica, where he once lived.
Lauryn Hill was in a long relationship with Marley's son Rohan, who played football for the Miami Hurricanes. They have at least three children together.
Time magazine named Marley's Exodus album the best of the 20th century.
Marley's group The Wailers (a trio this also included Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer), were famous in Jamaica since 1964, when they released their first single, but they didn't get international exposure until signing to Island Records in 1972 and becoming "Bob Marley & the Wailers."
Bob Marley & the Wailers were kicked off a tour in 1973 because they were upstaging the headliners, Sly And The Family Stone.
Four of Bob's children comprised the group Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers, including Stephen, who became a successful solo artist along with Ziggy. Other musical Marleys include his youngest son Damian and his grandson Skip.
Marley is by far the most famous reggae artist in history. For many years after his death, his catalog far outsold any living reggae musician. It wasn't until Shaggy and Sean Paul came along that another reggae star approached the sales figures of Marley's catalog.
Bono inducted Marley into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1994.
Marley was a Rastafarian. As such, he was a vegetarian and believed that marijuana (ganga), is a sacred herb. Rastafarians do not cut their hair.
His name was actually Nesta Robert Marley, "Nesta" meaning messenger, as his mother Cedella had great visions of his birth and she believed he was blessed by God. The possibly apocryphal story of how is name got flipped goes like this: When he got a passport to travel to America, the worker taking his details said he should put his middle name down as Nesta because it would be seen as a girl's name in America. That is why he is called Bob Marley.
Before music became his full-time gig, Marley juggled a series of working-class jobs in Jamaica and briefly in the United States, including time as a welder's apprentice and factory worker.
Marley was ailing from cancer the last few years of his life, but tried to power through it. On September 21, 1980, he collapsed while jogging in New York City's Central Park. Two days later, in Pittsburgh, he played his final concert.
Two days before the 1976 Smile Jamaica concert, politically motivated gunmen stormed Marley's Kingston home and shot him in the arm. Bob played the show anyway, bandaged and defiant.
Marley grew up in a small, one-room house on his grandfather's land near the village of Nine Mile in St. Ann Parish, far from the bustle of Kingston.
Marley married Alpharita "Rita" Anderson on February 10, 1966; they had four children together, and Bob fathered several more children with other women, for a widely cited total of 11.
Marley's Kingston neighborhood, Trench Town, got its name from the concrete drainage trenches in a government housing scheme. The area's poverty and overcrowding shaped many of his songs.
In January 2008, the Jamaican National Archives reported that about 80% of the musical archives from the Jamaican Broadcasting Corporation had been stolen, including many rare recordings from Marley, Peter Tosh and many other Reggae artists.
Marley didn't have a will, which resulted in numerous disputes over his estate since his death.
Amid the violence and political turmoil in Jamaica, Marley spoke out for peace and understanding, blaming much of the problem on economic injustice. Said Marley: "You have to share. I don't care if it sounds political or whatever it is, but people have to share."
Bob Marley was buried with his red Gibson guitar, a soccer ball, a marijuana bud, a ring that he'd worn every day and a Bible open at Psalm 23.
