#music, Saturday’s Oldie but Goodie!

Well some people probably thought that Bob Marley had shot a sheriff somewhere in Trenchtown, Jamaica. But he didn’t. He was a man of peace and love, not a killer. He was born in Nine Mile, Jamaica on the 6th of February 1945. His father was a white Jamaican of English descent who fought in WWI as a Captain of the Royal Marines; his mother was afro-Jamaican. Cedella, his mother re-married and moved to Delaware (US) and wanted to bring her son. Marley actually lived there with her for eight months and worked at a Chrysler plant. But he married Rita and moved to Kingston (1966) just when the rastafari movement had begun there.

In any event the song «I Shot the Sheriff» is not about shooting the real sheriff. Marley always said the «sheriff» was a metaphor for wickedness and he kept an air of mystery surrounding the song. But later (2012) Esther Anderson, a former girlfriend said the words: «Sheriff John Brown always hated me / For what, I don’t know / Every time I plant a seed / He said, ‘Kill it before it grow'», were written originally as «doctor» and replaced with «sheriff» because of Marley’s opposition to her use of birth control pills.

He wrote the song and recorded it in 1973. In 1974 Eric Clapton recorded the song which rose to number one on Billboard’s Hot 100. Other artists have covered the song including Jaco Pastorius.

Hope you liked the song and I look forward to your comments…

CHEERS