MP3 Exclusives New Arrivals   Alt-Country Alternative Blues Electronic Jambands Jazz Metal Pop Punk R&B Rap/Hip Hop Reggae Rock   Top Downloads Features Archive Contests Control Panel MUSICBLITZ Alert!   METALBLITZ REGGAEBLITZ BLUESBLITZ Musician's Friend   Alt-Country Alternative Blues Electronic Jambands Jazz Hip Hop Metal Pop Punk R&B Reggae Rock   Getting Started Free Players	Welcome !      Rita Marley She may be best-known for being Bob’s wife, but Rita Marley is a reggae legend in her own right. Her very distinguished career spans nearly 40 years and has been driven by a rare blend of angelic vocals and hard-headed business sense. When she met her future husband, Rita Anderson was already in the music business, leading the Soulettes, a female harmony group at Jamaica’s Studio One, back in the pre-reggae days of the mid-‘60s. She and Marley were married in 1966, moved to Delaware for a year, where Bob worked in a factory, then returned to the island. When Bob reformed his band, the Wailers, Rita added background vocals to several recordings, then began to pursue a solo career. But her husband’s international stardom in the early ‘70s put those plans on hold, especially after Bob’s bandmates Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer left the group in 1973. Rita and vocalist Judy Mowatt had been invited to appear on some recordings with star singer Marcia Griffiths, and the three women hit it off -- a good thing, since Bob Marley drafted them to replace Tosh and Bunny for the groundbreaking 1974 album “Natty Dread” and the tour that followed. The I-Threes stayed together for the rest of Bob’s career, sometimes serving as his opening act, until his death of cancer in 1981. Somewhat ironically, that was the year that Rita Marley’s solo career really took off, thanks to the album “Who Knows It, Feels It,” which sported the banned-in-England, pro-spliff hit “One Draw.” Despite the success, that was it for Rita until the late ‘80s; she helped instead to get her kids’ career -- you know them as Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers -- off the ground. The ‘90s have seen her not only reactivate the family’s old label, Tuff Gong, but return to singing, with guest shots on albums by Wyclef Jean, Alpha Blondy and old pal Jimmy Cliff, as well as a family reunion with sons and daughters as the Marley Family in summer 1996. Captured as a double live album, the show in New York’s Central Park featured several Bob covers by his still-proud widow, who also recorded an album of Bob Marley covers in the late ‘90s with her old I-Threes bandmates.     Rita Marley Good Girls Culture PlayJ Reggae Who says bad girls have all the fun? Mrs. Marley shows a woman’s got the power on this joyful Jamaican jam!
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