Bunny Wailer
| The Honourable Bunny Wailer |
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Bunny Wailer in 2014
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Neville O'Riley Livingston |
| Also known as | Bunny Livingston Bunny O'Riley |
| Born |
10 April 1947 Kingston, Jamaica |
| Genres | Reggae, roots reggae, ska |
| Occupation(s) | Vocalist, songwriter, percussionist |
| Instruments | Percussions (bongo drums, congas, tambourine, etc.), drums |
| Years active | 1960–present |
| Associated acts | The Wailers, Peter Tosh, Bob Marley |
| Notable instruments | |
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Bongo drums Congas |
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Neville O'Riley Livingston O.J. (born 10 April 1947), better known as Bunny Wailer, and also as Bunny Livingston and affectionately as Jah B, 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.
The young 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 became fast friends. The boys both came from one parent families; Livingston was being 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 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 stepbrother Bob Marley and friend Peter Tosh, and the short-lived members 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 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. In 1967, he recorded "This Train", based on a gospel standard, for the first time, at Studio One.
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