Marley  -The Eclectic Genius

By: Howard Campbell

Given the accolades bestowed upon Bob Marley in the Closing stages of 1999, even the uninitiated will agree that the reggae legend was an extraordinary human being his gifts as a songs writer and champion of the oppressed earning him the exalted praise from none other than respected institutions such as Time magazine and the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Marley’s genius with the pen was complemented by an ear for the perfect sound, a trait that aided greats like Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana and made albums like Are You Experienced and Abraxas classics.

Bob Marley was no different, both in the area of selecting musicians for his evolving sound and studio personnel to ensure a quality sound, particularly for his island Records albums.

Al Anderson, the American guitarist who played on four Marley albums, and Karl Pitterson, the Jamaican musician/ engineer who was at he console for two of those records, are just two of  the people that added a different dimension to the reggae King’s music.

From different background, both met Bob Marley at a time when his career was making the move to another level.  Pitterson first met Marley while he (Pitterson) was an intern at producer Clement Dobb’s Studio One in the 1960s while Anderson first bumped into him in England when Marley was about to start his third album Natty Dread for Island Records.

Pitterson’s skills like so many other Jamaican in the music business, was honed at Studio One, but reggae was pretty much an unknown beat to Anderson who was a struggling teenaged guitarist with not much of a resume when Marley invited him to Jamaica to work on Natty Dread.

“Jamaica was irie, a lot of good food and herb,” said Anderson, now 45, in a 1995 interview “The seventies was a groovy time in Jamaica,” influenced by blues legend Albert King, Anderson made his mark on Natty Dread which offered the first glimpse of Marley experimenting with different music forms including folk, and according to Anderson, country.  Natty Dread was pretty progressive; So Jah Sey was the blues’ Rebel Music was folk and No Woman No Cry was country,” Anderson recalled in a recent interview.  “He liked the guitar sound but didn’t want a lot of it on the album.”

Anderson bluesy feel can also be heard on Marley’s follow-up album, 1976’s Rasta Vibration which was released in the year Marley made a major international breakthrough when rock superstar, Eric Clapton covered I Shot the Sheriff. Highly regarded by Island’s boss, Chris Blackwell, Pitterson had just made London his home when Marley took his band there in early 1977 to escape the political pressures of Jamaica.  He was to begin work on Exodus, the album that would break him, though not in a significant way in the United States.

Pitterson, who now operates the Miami-based Southend Production, credits the change in atmosphere, and equipment, for Exodus coming out the way it did.  “For one thing it wasn’t Jamaica, everyone was feeling good and on the right path,” he recalled.  “The equipment was state-of-the-art and to me, that’s why Exodus is a very good album.”  Marley and the Wailers would record for three months, nonstop, in London in sessions that also gave birth to 1978’s Kaya which followed in the vein of Exodus and offered a mixture of socially-biting lyrics and romantic ballads like Is This Love.

Anderson and Pitterson followed different paths after Rastaman Vibration and Exodus respectively.  Anderson left for Peter Tosh’s Word, Sound and Power band after falling out with Marley’s manager, Don Taylor.  He played on two of Tosh’s seminal albums, Legalize It and Equal Rights.  He his presently a member of singer Lauryn Hill’s band.  Pitterson, a publicity-shy personality, was responsible for the mastering of album by some of Island’s biggest acts including pop singer Robert Palmer and progressive rock group Emerson, Lake and Palmer.  One of his best effort is Steel Pulse’s powerful 1981 offering, “ True Democracy”.