Bouncy Beats: Wailers to play at Davis Cup party

Thursday, April 5, 2007

By Ed Bumgardner

relish reporter

Aston "Family Man" Barrett was already the go-to session bass player in Kingston, Jamaica, when he got a call from a friend in 1969 telling him that a singer named Bob Marley wanted to meet him.

"I told my friend to get up, go lickity-split, set this thing up, as I knew of Bob as one of the singers in The Wailers, a favorite vocal group in Kingston," Barrett said during a recent phone interview, his speech a colorful tangle of Jamaican patois and Rastafarian idiosyncrasies. "I knew also that he had been away to America, and me interested in hearing what he was now about."

A meeting was set up. Barrett, barely out of his teens, was to meet the more-worldly Marley outside a club. The assigned time for the meeting came - no Marley. It turned out that Marley had arrived, looked around, seen only a kid, and had gone back to the house of their mutual friend to complain.

"Him a-go back, and him say, 'What kind of devilment you play? I a-go to this meeting, and there is only a boy.' My friend take him back to where we meet, and he point to me and him say, 'That boy, that is Family Man, true enough.'"

Marley was perplexed. He expected to meet someone much older, given Barrett's nickname. He asked if this was the same Family Man whose innovative bass work he had heard all over the radio. Assured that it was, he then approached Barrett. "He look at me like I and I was some kind of duppy (ghost)," he said. "He say to me, 'Is it truth, boy, that you are this same Family Man who play those tough bass lines, and who play with Scratch (Lee Perry) in the Upsetters?' I tell him yes, that is I and I.

"He look at me and say, 'Feel no way, mon, but if this prove to be true, you and me, we have work to do, no problem.'

"And that was that. I was by his side from that time on, taking care of the Wailers' music, up to when he passed away. And I still take care of his music, straight up, you know?"

Barrett, now 60, continues to lead a version of The Wailers, balancing playing Marley's legacy for a new generation with performing new songs that he contends will be "a new roots vibe, pure and absolved, righteous and true in the eyes of the Almighty."

The Wailers will perform Saturday at the Racket in the Streets block party in the Downtown Arts District, part of the Davis Cup festivities.

Barrett feels that it is his calling to maintain the Wailers' reputation as the most ferocious and influential band in reggae history. He had a hand in the music's creation - he co-wrote songs with Marley, was responsible for the majority of the band's arrangements, and worked as a co-producer and engineer on all recordings by Marley and the Wailers.

He points to his name, "Family Man" as proof of his musical purpose. The name does not stem from the long-rumored tale of his having fathered 52 children. "Yah, man, that story make laugh. If that foolishness be true, then I and I never play music, as me would have long ago gone to the grave," he said, laughing. "That name show the responsibility me bear, because me the head of my musical family. Me the General who gave reggae music that backbone, that fresh feel. In the Wailers, Bob take care of the songs and the business. Me take care of the band, the music."

History backs Barrett up. All of Marley's biographers credit Barrett and his late brother, Carlie, with creating the funky "one-drop" groove that defined the music made by Marley and The Wailers.

Barrett's distinctive approach to playing bass - all loping bass lines and unyielding pulse, articulated slightly behind the beat, dancing between notes, sketching melody and anchoring groove - is considered the crucial bridge between Jamaican rock-steady music and the roots reggae that followed.

"When I play, I sing the part first, then I sing it again with my hands," he said. "Me draw the melody and then me also drop down on the heartbeat of the song. At that point, I and I are the guiding light to take this song to that place where the rhythm is wicked."

He laughed, a low, lazy rumble. "It like I and I say, with praise to the Almighty - me originate, others imitate."

Barrett is aware that some people think he has no business leading a Marleyless version of The Wailers. Said detractors include Rita Marley, Bob's widow and the executrix of the Marley estate, which has been a legal quagmire since Marley's death in 1981 (he left no will). Barrett and the Marley estate have long been legally entangled over dispersement of royalties that Barrett believes that he, and other members of the Wailers, are entitled to collect.

A 1994 suit brought Barrett some "justice," he said, but a larger suit, filed last year in London, was dismissed. Barrett points to his well-documented contributions to Marley's musical legacy. Rita Marley maintains that Barrett and his fellow Wailers were merely sidemen attending to her husband's vision.

"This I say - Bob was a great man, a positive force, whose songs, whose message, was the heartbeat of man and the very soul of universal love, no matter what culture," Barrett said. "He create this force out of the environment and he speak the truth of this world through the eyes of the Almighty.

"But he not do this thing alone. Bob was me bredren. But Bob, me brother Carlie and I and I, we were the trinity of Bob Marley and The Wailers as the world knows it. Listen close to what I and I have to say about this matter now - first there was The Wailers, with the great Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston (Bunny Wailer). Then, with Carlie and I and I, come Bob Marley and The Wailers. Now it is just The Wailers once again.

"Same leaves, same branches, but I am the root," he said. "What was built cannot be taken away."