Bunny Wailer Biography
Bunny Wailer, is a Jamaican singer-songwriter and percussionist and 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 is also known as Bunny Livingston and affectionately Jah B.
10 Quick Facts About Bunny Wailer
- Name: Bunny Wailer
- Age: 75 years
- Birthday: 10 April
- Zodiac Sign: Aries
- Height: Average
- Nationality: Jamaican
- Occupation: Singer-Songwriter and Percussionist
- Marital Status: Not Known
- Salary: Under review
- Net worth: Under review
Bunny Wailer Age
The singer was born on 10th April 1947. His full names are Neville O’Riley Livingston. The young Neville Livingston spent his earliest years in the village of Nine Mile in St. Ann Parish.
It was there that he first met Bob Marley, and the two toddlers befriended each other quickly.The boys both came from single-parent families; Livingston was brought up by his father, Marley by his mother Later.
Bunny’s father Thaddeus “Toddy” Livingston lived with Bob Marley’s mother Cedella Booker and had a daughter with her named Pearl Livingston. Peter Tosh had a son, Andrew Tosh, with another of Bunny’s sisters, Shirley, making Andrew his nephew.
Bunny Wailer Band
Bunny had originally gone to audition for Leslie Kong at Beverley’s Records in 1962, around the same time Bob Marley was cutting “Judge Not”. Bunny had intended to sing his first composition, “Pass It On”, which at the time was more ska-oriented.
However, Bunny was late getting out of school, missed his audition, and was told he wasn’t needed. A few months later, in 1963; he formed “The Wailing Wailers” with his step-brother Bob Marley and friend Peter Tosh, and Junior Braithwaite and Beverley Kelso.
As he was by some way the least forceful of the group, he tended to sing lead vocals less often than Marley and Tosh in the early years, but when Bob Marley left Jamaica in 1966 for Delaware, replacing Bunny with Constantine “Vision” Walker.
He 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”. His music was very influenced by gospel and the soul of Curtis Mayfield.
Bunny Wailer Tour
Bunny Wailer toured with the Wailers in England and the United States but soon became reluctant to leave Jamaica. He and Tosh became more marginalized in the group as the Wailers became an international success, and attention was increasingly focused on Marley.
Bunny subsequently left the Wailers in 1973 to pursue a solo career after refusing to tour when Chris Blackwell wanted the Wailers to tour freak clubs in the United States, stating that it was against his Rastafari principles.
Before leaving the Wailers, Bunny became more focused on his spiritual faith. He identified with the Rastafari movement, as did the other Wailers.
He has also written much of his own material as well as re-recording a number of cuts from the Wailers catalog. Bunny Wailer has recorded primarily in the roots style, in keeping with his often political and spiritual messages.
He and Tosh would frequently sing each other’s background vocals in the start of their solo careers. The album Blackheart Man is a good example of his roots reggae style.
Bunny Wailer Solo Career
After leaving the Wailers, He experimented with disco on his album Hook Line & Sinker while Sings the Wailers successfully reworks many of The Wailers songs with the backing of top Jamaican musicians, Sly and Robbie.
He has also had success recording in the typically apolitical, more pop, dancehall style. He has outlived his contemporaries in a culture where death by violence is commonplace.
However, he also had a dancehall/Rockers edge that was best exemplified by the album Bunny Wailer Sings the Wailers in which he re-interprets some of the Wailers material as a solo Roots singer backed by a solid Sly & Robbie based Roots reggae grouping.
Bunny Wailer Albums
♦ Protest (1977) Solomonic
♦ Struggle (1978) Solomonic
♦ In I Father’s House (1979) Solomonic
♦ Bunny Wailer Sings the Wailers (1980) Solomonic
♦ Dubd’sco vol.2 (1981) Solomonic
♦ Rock ‘n’ Groove (1981) Solomonic
♦ Tribute (1981) Solomonic
♦ Hook Line & Sinker (1982) Solomonic
♦ Roots Radics Rockers Reggae (1983) Shanachie
♦ Live! (1983) Solomonic
♦ Marketplace (1985) Solomonic
♦ Roots Of Jamaica (1986) Clintion
♦ Rootsman Skanking (1987) Shanachie (international re-release of
♦ Rock And Groove edited version plus 3 extra tracks)
♦ Rule Dance Hall (1987) Shanachie
♦ Liberation (1989) Shanachie
♦ Time Will Tell: A Tribute to Bob Marley (1990) Shanachie ♦(international re-release of Tribute + 2 extra tracks)
♦ Gumption (1990) Shanachie
To get more of Bunny Waler’s Songs and Albus click on https://genius.com/artists/Bunny-wailer
Bunny Wailer Wife
The information will be updated soon. bunny wailer has a daughter Sensi Wailer we are currently undertaking a review to find detailed information about the musicians family, married life, or children.
Bunny Wailer Awards
Bunny Wailer has won the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album in 1991 for the album “Time Will Tell: A Tribute to Bob Marley”, 1995 for “Crucial! Roots Classics”, and 1997 for “Hall of Fame: A Tribute to Bob Marley ‘s 50th Anniversary (RAS)”.
He was also featured on the album True Love by Toots and the Maytals, which won the Grammy Award in 2004 for Best Reggae Album and showcased many notable musicians including Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Trey Anastasio.
Bunny Wailer Dead Or Alive
Bunny is not dead he is still alive, Today, Bunny resides in Kingston and on a farm located in the interior of Jamaica, according to Bob Marley’s official website. Bunny Wailer and Beverley Kelso are the only surviving members of the original Wailers.
In August 2012 it was announced that Bunny Wailer would receive Jamaica’s fifth highest honor, the Order of Jamaica. In 2016, he played a month-long ‘Blackheart Man’ tour to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his 1976 album.
In October 2017 he was awarded the Order of Merit by the Jamaican government, the nation’s fourth-highest honor. In October 2018, Wailer suffered a minor stroke, resulting in speech problems.
Bunny Wailer Interview
As a Jamaican expat said to Bunny Wailer in the green room after his recent performance in Boston, “Peter gone, Bob gone. You do only one dere.”
This is a statement of fact, but also of musical reality. Bunny Wailer is now 69 and appears to be in good health. He spent 90 minutes before an excited full-house at Boston’s Paradise nightclub, ably dusting off old classics and new songs.
He was dressed all in white, his gray dreads swirling on his head like the top of a soft-serve ice cream cone. The Wailers are no more, of course. Bob Marley died of cancer in 1981. Peter Tosh was murdered in 1987.
That leaves Bunny Wailer, born Bunny Livingston, the last Wailer standing. And he still uses the last name “Wailer.”Because I didn’t leave the Wailers,” he told me. “I’m still here, representing the Wailers.”
He paused, and as if calling out to the crowd he just left, and asks of no one in particular, “Who’s representing the Wailers? I am. Bunny Wailer!”
When you go back and listen to the first single released by the trio known as The Wailers, the bouncy 1963 track “Simmer Down,” you quickly realize they were no average Jamaican band.
After all, that first single was a plea to Kingston’s gangs or “rude boys” to stop their rampage of Trenchtown and other ghettos in the city. The first ska-rocksteady-reggae group with social consciousness would be the touchstone for many others.
Bunny Wailer Contacts
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