| Beverly Kelso, The "Lost" Voice of the Wailers |
May Day, 2003. Beverly Kelso, the "lost" female Wailer and veteran of two dozen '60s Coxsone tracks with
Bunny, Bob, Peter and Junior Braithwaite, has joined me for a lengthy debriefing about those tumultuous
and rigorously creative years. Along with her partner, Boswell, we are seated in a surrealistic suite
at the Gershwin Hotel, just off Fifth Avenue on 27th Street in Manhattan. The walls are covered in
bizarre black-and-white snakeskin paper and lighted by neon artworks that give a diffused glow to the
surroundings. Beverly is anxious to set the record straight after decades of avoiding the press...
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Marley Berkeley Poster 1978
Back in 1978 a California artist was asked to design her first poster. That image of Bob Marley has since
achieved iconic status. Here, she tells the story of how it came about.
It was 1978. I was 23 years old when I was given the opportunity of a lifetime -- to design the promotional
poster for the Bob Marley concert at the Greek Theater on the campus of the University of California-Berkeley...
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First Fruits: Original Wailer Cherry Green
"We used to rehearse back in the back yard. We didn't even have electric light, you know, [only] kerosene
oil, torch, or the fire that my brother make. But we had a good old time. And now it's history."
Cherry Green sang with the Wailers in Joe Higgs' yard for years before the group recorded. Her role in the
Wailers' history has gone largely unnoticed. Here, she reclaims her part of the story in a rare interview...
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The photographs of New York-based photographer Kate Simon have become some of the most ubiquitous images
in the world of reggae. From the cover of Bob Marley's Kaya album, to the spectacular high-kicking
Peter Tosh, and Scratch, aghast at his own genius in the Black Ark studios, Simon's brave and witty shots
have led us into the innermost circles of reggae's Golden Age at some of its most "decisive moments"...
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Rasta used to preach vigorously against birth control, but those prohibitions seem to have diminished with
the onset of the scourge of AIDS. How much of a transition we've undergone is highlighted by a Zimbabwean
government program to distribute free condoms recently -- bearing a picture of Bob Marley!...
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