Natty Dread

Natty Dread is a 1974 reggae album by Bob Marley & The Wailers.

An important transition in Marley’s discography, Natty Dread was the first album released as Bob Marley & the Wailers (as opposed to The Wailers) and the first recorded without former bandmates Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. It is also the first album recorded with the I-Threes, a female vocal trio that included Bob’s wife, Rita Marley, along with Marcia Griffiths and Judy Mowatt.

Natty Dread is a spiritually charged political and social statement. It opens with a blues-influenced positive celebration of skanking, reggae and sex, Lively Up Yourself, which Marley used to open many of his concerts, in order to get the audience worked up; American R&B star Prince used it for the same purpose. No Woman No Cry, the second track, is probably the best known recording on the album. It is a nostalgic remembrance of growing up in the impoverished streets of Trenchtown, and the happiness brought by the company of friends. The song has been performed by artists as diverse as Boney M. (sung by Liz Mitchell), The Fugees, Pearl Jam, Jimmy Buffett, and Rancid. Songwriting credit for “No Woman, No Cry” went to V. Ford. Ford, better known as Tartar to his friends and neighbors, had been a kind friend of Marley as a child in Trench Town, the ghetto of Kingston, Jamaica. Marley claimed he would have starved to death on several occasions as a child if not for the aid of Tartar.