Cedella Booker, mother of international reggae icon Bob Marley, has died in her sleep in Miami.
I had the privilege of hanging out with this marvelous and vibrant woman several times when I was a guest in her Wilmington, Delaware, home and she a visitor at the farm where I lived. As matriarch of that city’s small Jamaican community, she always had an open door and offered a helping hand.
“Mama Marley” or “Mama B, “as she was alternately known, was born in Rhoden Hall, Jamaica and later moved to Nine Miles, St. Ann, where at age 18 she married Norval Sinclair Marley, a white Jamaican marine officer and ships captain with English roots. Their son Robert Nesta Marley was born in 1945.
Norval Marley died when Bob was 10. Mother and son then moved to Trench Town in Kingston, and in 1963 to Wilmington to live with her sister. There she met and married Edward Booker, who owned a local record store.
Bob returned to Jamaica in 1964, but his musical career foundered and in 1966 he returned to Wilmington with wife Rita, whom he had just married and later became a member of the I Threes, his back-up singers. He worked at a Chrysler Corporation auto manufacturing plant (the inspiration for his song “Night Shift”), but soon realized that his destiny was not toiling on an assembly line and he again returned to Jamaica, where his career finally took off.
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