| Neville Livingston,
aka the mysterious Bunny Wailer or Jah B, is the only surviving
member of the original Wailers, and a living legend. Paradoxically,
he is also the less known and his work has always been overlooked
and under rated. This is perhaps due to the fact that he never really
liked to tour and promote his music, and never accepted any compromise
with Babylon. As a member of the Wailers, his role has often been
minimized. Most Wailers tracks were written and sung by Bob, sometimes
by Peter, almost never by Bunny. From times to times, the Wailers
would release a Bunny gem like Dreamland, but too rarely in my opinion.
Bob and Peter took over during the shows and recording sessions.
This doesn't mean Bunny was not good enough, because Bunny is a
truely talented artist in his own right, and his superb harmonies
contributed a lot to shape the Wailers sound. |
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| His most famous album is
with no doubt the sublime "Blackheart Man album", released
in 1976. A masterpiece, a must have album, a classic that should
be in any reggae collection. Most of his work can be obtained easily
on reissues of the early Wailers material (Heartbeat Studio One
reissues, Complete Wailers, etc) and on the albums that were released
since the mid 70's that can be found on CDs or import Jamaican LPs.
Despite the availability of this material, perhaps the most fascinating
music Bunny ever recorded is missing. “Half the story has never
been told” we could say, as the Wailers were singing in “Get
up stand up”. |
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| Indeed, there are still
several songs that have remained uncollected to this day. When Bunny
lauched his Solomonic label in 1972, he recorded a few songs with
the Wailers. Some of them would later be recut or remixed and included
on the majestic "Blackheart Man". The songs are Arab's
oil weapon, Pass it on, Battering
down sentence, Life line,
Bide up and Searching
for love, all dating back from 72 to 76. Those tunes are magic,
pure magic. As you can hear samples of them on this site, you will
be able to have your own opinion. |
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| Arab's oil weapon and Life
line were both reissued on an american 12 inches, on the Nighthawk
label in 1981, as well as on an album entitled "Wiser Dread"
on the same label. The early versions of Pass it on (by the way,
I am badly looking for a copy of this 45: if you have a copy for
sale or trade, please e-mail
me), Battering down sentence (it appeared under the title Fighting
against conviction on "Blackheart Man"), Bide up and the
gorgeous Searching for love can only be found on hard to find jamaican
45's and nowhere else. However, Pass it on, a DJ version of Bide
up and Searching for love seem to be on a long out of print Nighthawk
LP called "Knotty Vision". |
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| Around 1976, several singles
taken from "Blackheart man" featured alternate mixes (such
as Rastaman among others), and in 1977 Bunny released the song Anti
Apartheid (actually an instrumental version of Armagedion with
Peter tosh playing melodica). The reason why all this brilliant
material has never been collected is a real mistery. There had been
plans to reissue those uncollected jamaican 45's a few years ago,
but for some reason this project never materialised. Let's hope
one day Bunny will take the decision to collect all those rare gems
together on a definitive Bunny Wailer anthology. There is enough
music (with the dub versions for each track, like that crazy dub
of Dreamland with Bunny singing
a capella, and the DJ cuts of Bide up) to compile a terrific album
that would sell like hot cakes. Why not release something like the
"Honorary Citizen" boxset as it was done for Peter, with
a CD collecting his jamaican singles? It's up to you Bunny. |
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