World of Jamaican Music

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An illustrated map of the creators of Jamaican music and how they are connected.

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Bunny Wailer

Artist. Ska, rocksteady, reggae

Active
1963-2021
Sunrise
April 10, 1947, Kingston, Jamaica
Sunset
March 2, 2021, Kingston, Jamaica
Also recorded as
Bunny Livingston
Also known as
Jah B, The Solomonic

Neville O'Riley Livingston, who recorded as Bunny Wailer, co-founded the Wailers with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, sang the harmony parts that defined the group's sound, and then made in Blackheart Man one of the few solo albums from that circle that stands entirely on its own.

He was born in Nine Mile and knew Marley from childhood. After Norval Marley's sunset in 1955, Cedella Marley moved in with Livingston's father Thaddeus in Trench Town and the two had a daughter, Pearl, which made the boys stepbrothers. Both studied with Joe Higgs, where they met Tosh, and in 1961 the three formed the group that became the Wailing Wailers, with Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, and Cherry Smith (also known as Cherry Green). "Simmer Down" made them the biggest group in Jamaica at the start of 1964. Braithwaite, Kelso, and Smith left the following year.

Marley and Tosh wrote and sang lead, but the Wailers' harmony was Livingston's contribution as much as anyone's, audible on "Dreamland," "Riding High," "Keep On Moving," "Reincarnated Souls," and "Hallelujah Time." "Dreamland," a doo-wop song he had first cut at Studio One, became in the Lee Perry years a beautiful repatriation plea, quite possibly his most enduring performance, and he returned to it later. "Reincarnated Souls" and "Hallelujah Time," along with "Pass It On," were written for him by Judy Mowatt under the name Jean Watt. The Rough Guide judges that he matured fastest of the three as singer and songwriter. His early voice, a less fragile version of Curtis Mayfield's tenor, was made for romantic material such as "Sunday Morning," and from the early 1970s that romanticism turned reflective and spiritual, in "Searching for Love," "Bide Up" and "Arab Oil Weapon."

When Island signed the group in 1972 and Chris Blackwell began presenting the Wailers as Marley's backing band, Livingston objected. He refused a United States tour on the grounds that playing what he described as freak clubs for almost entirely white audiences was incompatible with his Rastafarian principles, and left in 1973. Burnin' was the last album with all three original members.

Blackheart Man (1976) was the answer. He wrote, produced, and sang lead throughout, with Marley and Tosh contributing backing vocals, and returned the favor on Tosh's Legalize It the same year. The title refers to the bogeyman figure parents once used to frighten children away from Rastafarians, which Livingston reclaimed. The record is slower and more liturgical than anything Marley was making at the time, and it argues a position: self-reliance, black sovereignty, and Rastafari as a political program rather than an aesthetic.

He stayed in Jamaica and kept recording, moving through disco and dancehall over more than two dozen albums while returning repeatedly to roots. Bunny Wailer Sings the Wailers, made with Sly and Robbie, reworked the group's catalog. He won three Grammy Awards for Best Reggae Album: Time Will Tell: A Tribute to Bob Marley (1991), Crucial! Roots Classics (1995), and Hall of Fame (1997).

He campaigned for copyright reform that would let Jamaican artists reclaim rights to work signed away decades earlier. Jamaica made him a member of the Order of Jamaica in 2012 and awarded him the Order of Merit in 2017. In the 1990s he gave sixty-four hours of interviews to Roger Steffens and Leroy Jodie Pierson for an autobiography, "Old Fire Sticks," which he later abandoned.

His last tour was in 2016, marking forty years of Blackheart Man and his first American dates in more than two decades. He suffered a stroke in 2020, was admitted to hospital in Kingston that December, and departed there on March 2, 2021, at seventy-three. Marley had departed in 1981 and Tosh's life was taken in 1987, so his sunset ended the group's living line.

Last updated October 31, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Barrow and Dalton call the album "sublime music," with "the strongest songs Bunny ever performed": Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 143. Wikipedia calls it "widely felt to be one of reggae's highest peaks": "Bunny Wailer," Wikipedia, accessed October 1, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunny_Wailer.
  2. Wikipedia gives his birthplace as Kingston and says he spent his early years in Nine Mile, where he met Marley: "Bunny Wailer," Wikipedia.
  3. On Thaddeus Livingston, Cedella Booker, and their daughter Pearl, "Bunny Wailer," Wikipedia.
  4. Barrow and Dalton say the group first got together at Higgs's yard in 1961 as the Teenagers, with "Beverley Kelso and Cherry Green" as backing singers: Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 38. Wikipedia dates the Wailing Wailers to 1963: "Bunny Wailer," Wikipedia.
  5. Barrow and Dalton say "Simmer Down" "stayed at the top of the Jamaican charts for two months following its release at the end of December 1963": Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 38.
  6. Barrow and Dalton describe Tosh and Bunny's main contribution on the early Tuff Gong releases as "superb harmonizers": Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 139. "Keep On Moving" is Curtis Mayfield's song: 143.
  7. Barrow and Dalton call it a doo-wop cover first cut at Studio One, place it in the Upsetter years and note his "1971 cut": Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 131, 141. Wikipedia describes it as "a cover of El Tempos' 'My Dream Island'": "Bunny Wailer," Wikipedia.
  8. DancehallMag, by contrast, identifies Jean Watt as Bunny Wailer's wife, "credited for writing 'Hallelujah Time' and 'Pass It On'": Shirvan Williams, "The Wife of Bunny Wailer, Jean Watt, Is Missing," DancehallMag, May 27, 2020, https://www.dancehallmag.com/2020/05/27/news/the-wife-of-bunny-wailer-jean-watt-is-missing.html.
  9. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 140-41.
  10. Barrow and Dalton write that Bunny "became unwilling to leave Jamaica after quitting the band at the end of spring 1973 in London," and that Joe Higgs replaced him on the US tour: Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 137-38. On "freak clubs," "Bunny Wailer," Wikipedia. John Masouri says that he and Tosh blamed Marley for agreeing to the name Bob Marley and the Wailers: "To them, Bob betrayed them": Ian Burrell, "Move Over Bob Marley: Peter Tosh Is Finally Getting the Recognition He Deserves," Independent, November 2, 2013, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/move-over-bob-marley-peter-tosh-is-finally-getting-the-recognition-he-deserves-8914028.html.
  11. Barrow and Dalton note that both of the Wailers' first two Island albums "included contributions from Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer": Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 141.
  12. Barrow and Dalton note that 1975's "Battering Down Sentence" and "Rasta Man" became highlights of "his classic first album": Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 141; see also 143.
  13. Barrow and Dalton date the album, made with Sly and Robbie, to 1980 and note that its ten songs, "four written by Bob, three by Bunny, two by Peter, plus Curtis Mayfield's 'Keep On Moving'," reflect each member's contribution: Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 143.
  14. On the three Grammys, "Bunny Wailer," Wikipedia.
  15. On the Order of Jamaica (August 2012) and the Order of Merit (October 2017), "Bunny Wailer," Wikipedia.
  16. Steffens, quoted in 2010: "There are more than 1,800 pages of transcripts," and "virtually all the questions fans have about the Wailers' history are answered in Bunny's often bitter memoir." He says they learned from Bunny's bandleader in 2001 that the project had been dropped, "reportedly under pressure from the Marley clan": Richard "Bugs" Burnett, "Bunny Wailer: April 10, 1947 - Mar 2, 2021," PAN M 360, March 2, 2021, https://panm360.com/en/?p=40366.
  17. Wikipedia notes the 2016 Blackheart Man anniversary tour, a minor stroke in October 2018 and another in July 2020, and his death on March 2, 2021, at seventy-three: "Bunny Wailer," Wikipedia.

World of Jamaican Music: the whole map