The rapid post-war influx of people from the land into Kingston had triggered an era of haphazard growth and wildly uneven wealth distribution in and around the capital. For most of its history, Jamaica had been a rural economy. These two songs alone marked out Burnin’ as an album that gave serious voice to some heavy social and cultural concerns. It would be another year before Eric Clapton took his version of the song to No.1 in the US (No.9 in the UK), a game-changing hit that would transform the worldwide perception and fortunes of reggae music at a stroke. “If I am guilty I will pay,” Marley sang, but the story left little room for doubt that this was a righteous killing provoked by a history of grievous mistreatment by the lawman in question. Meanwhile, the album’s most celebrated song, “I Shot The Sheriff” was a precursor of the murderous street stories that would later come to define American gangsta rap.
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The melody was mournful, the tone full of anger and regret as Marley pondered his people’s predicament: “All that we got, it seems we have lost.”
Powered by Aston “Family Man” Barrett’s supremely melodic bassline and brother Carlton Barrett’s one-drop drum beat, the song had a groove that hovered somewhere between a funeral march and an all-night shebeen. The album’s almost-title track “Burnin’ And Lootin’” promised a full-scale riot. Burnin’ upped the ante in all departments. Island Records supremo Chris Blackwell, who had begun his career selling records by Jamaican acts from the boot of his car to the expatriate community in Britain, knew a thing or two about this particular market and now scented something spectacular in the air.Ĭatch A Fire had not only introduced the sinuous rhythmic charms of reggae music, but it had also alerted the world to the cry for justice of a poor and historically dispossessed people.
Still billed only as The Wailers, and still led by the three-man vocal front line of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer, the band was now moving through the gears with an increasing sense of mission.Īlthough Catch A Fire had not been a hit, the response to it among tastemakers and early adopters had been overwhelming. Less than six months after the Wailers released their first international album, Catch A Fire on May 4, the conflagration continued with the release of Burnin’ on October 19. Things moved fast in the music business of 1973.
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