Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers Artistfacts

Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers song list

Ziggy Marley & the Melody Makers Artistfacts

1979-2002
Ziggy Marley
Sharon Marley
Cedella Marley
Stephen Marley
Ziggy Marley got top billing, but the group was a family band made up of four of Bob Marley's children: Ziggy, Sharon, Cedella and Stephen. Sharon and Cedella are both older than Ziggy, but he was picked to be their leader because he's the oldest male offspring.
The group name came from a British music magazine called Melody Maker. When that magazine interviewed the group in 1985, they cheekily asked if they provided the name, and were surprised to learn they did. "There was a cover story on daddy and it was made into a poster and we saw it hanging up," Stephen Marley told their reporter. "I thought daddy must have a group called the Melody Makers and we all thought 'Good name.' They asked us if we wanted to be called The Marleys and we said 'No' because we didn't want to trade on the name. When we saw a copy of the paper later we thought they'd named it after us!"
Bob Marley put the group together but was careful to shield them from the pressures that came with being the children of the most famous man in Jamaica. "We used to play together a lot just for fun as a family," Cedella told Melody Maker. "But it was daddy who started us as a group. He took us into the studio but he'd say to mummy 'Rita - don't push them,' let them take their time and learn their business."
Their first release came in 1979 when Bob was still alive and Ziggy was just 11. It's a single called "Children Playing In The Streets," which Bob wrote four years earlier. When Bob died in 1981, his wife Rita oversaw the group, which released their first album in 1985.
Their early recording used Bob Marley's backing group The Wailers, but starting with their 1988 breakthrough album Conscious Party, they used an Ethiopian-born, Chicago-based reggae band called Dallol on their recordings and tours. Dallol were signed to Rita Marley's Tuff Gong label; Ziggy liked how their partnership brought "Africa and Jamaica together."
They had a hit in 1988 with "Tomorrow People," which charted at #39 in the US - higher than any Bob Marley song ever did.
Their 1988 Conscious Party album was their first recorded outside Jamaica - they made it in the Bahamas with Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth - the rhythm section of Talking Heads - producing. "We were walking a tightrope because we had one foot in traditional reggae and another foot in what the young kids, the new kids of reggae, were into," Frantz told Songfacts.
Ziggy and Stephen Marley were the primary songwriters in the group. Both became solo artists, with Ziggy releasing his first album in 2003 and Stephen in 2007.

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