Bunny Wailer ✝

Neville O'Riley Livingston OM OJ (10 April 1947 – 2 March 2021), known professionally as Bunny Wailer, was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and percussionist. He was an original member of reggae group The Wailers along with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he is considered one of the longtime standard-bearers of reggae music. He was also known as Jah B, Bunny O'Riley, and Bunny Livingston. Wailer was born Neville O'Riley Livingston on 10 April 1947 in Kingston. He spent his earliest years in the village of Nine Mile in Saint Ann Parish. It was there that he first met Bob Marley, and the two young boys befriended each other quickly. The boys both came from single-parent families; Livingston was brought up by his father, Marley by his mother. Later, Wailer's father Thaddeus "Thaddy Shut" Livingston lived with Marley's mother Cedella Booker in Trenchtown and had a daughter with her named Pearl Livingston. Peter Tosh had a son, Andrew Tosh, with Wailer's sister Shirley, making Andrew his nephew. Wailer had originally gone to audition for Leslie Kong at Beverley's Records in 1962, around the same time his step-brother Bob Marley was cutting "Judge Not". Wailer had intended to sing his first composition, "Pass It On", which at the time was more ska-oriented. However, Wailer was late getting out of school and missed his audition. A few months later, in 1963, he formed "The Wailing Wailers" with Marley and friend Peter Tosh, and the short-term members Junior Braithwaite and Beverley Kelso. Wailer tended to sing lead vocals less often than Marley and Tosh in the early years, but when Marley left Jamaica in 1966 for Delaware in the US, and was briefly replaced by Constantine "Vision" Walker, Wailer began to record and sing lead vocals on some of his own compositions, such as "Who Feels It Knows It", "I Stand Predominant", and "Sunday Morning". Wailer's style of music was influenced by gospel music and the soul singer Curtis Mayfield. In 1967, he recorded "This Train", based on a gospel standard, for the first time, at Studio One.