Reggae legend, Bunny Wailer, died Tuesday in Kingston at the age of 73, the Jamaican government said.
Wailer co-founded The Wailers with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh in the 1960s.
Although the cause of death was given, the culture ministry said Wailer — his real name was Neville Livingstone — had been hospitalized since December.
He was the last surviving original member of the Wailers after Marley died of cancer in 1981, and Peter Tosh was murdered in 1987.
Wailer, who was a childhood friend of Marley, won three Grammys over the course of his career and in 2017 he was awarded Jamaica’s Order of Merit — the country’s fourth highest honor.
“We remain grateful for the role that Bunny Wailer played in the development and popularity of Reggae music across the world,” Culture Minister Olivia Grange said in a statement.
“We remember with great pride how Bunny, Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, took Reggae music to the four corners of the earth,” she added.
The Wailers, one of reggae’s pioneering bands and the breeding ground for icons Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer, the Wailers developed from their early-’60s origins as a vocal act to recording some of the most innovative and best-known songs in the entire genre.
Following their early-’70s classics Catch a Fire and Burnin’, Tosh and Wailer forged ahead with their respective solo careers while Marley refashioned the group as a vehicle for his own socially and politically conscious solo material, leading to their commercial apex in the latter part of that decade.
Under Marley’s leadership, they broke out internationally with 1975’s Live! and helped to deliver reggae to the global mainstream with subsequent albums like Rastaman Vibration, Exodus, and Kaya.
Marley’s death from cancer in 1981 cut the last ties to the original Wailers lineup, although the core bandmembers of their 1970s era — most notably bassist Aston “Family Man” Barrett, his brother, drummer Carly Barrett, and guitarist Junior Marvin — continued to carry the torch, touring and recording alternately as the Wailers and the Wailers Band over the next several decades.
Formed in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1963, the original lineup was a ska vocal group consisting of Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, Bunny Livingston, Bob Marley, Peter McIntosh, and Cherry Smith; they were called variously the Teenagers, the Wailing Rudeboys, the Wailing Wailers, and finally the Wailers. Braithwaite, Kelso, and Smith had departed by 1966, leaving the trio of Livingston, Marley, Peter McIntosh, and Cherry Smith; they were called variously the Teenagers, the Wailing Rudeboys, the Wailing Wailers, and finally the Wailers.
Braithwaite, Kelso, and Smith had departed by 1966, leaving the trio of Livingston, Marley, and McIntosh. By the early ’70s, they had begun playing musical instruments and added a rhythm section consisting of brothers Aston.
