The Jamaica Observer’s Entertainment Desk continues with the 49th of its biweekly feature looking at seminal moments that have helped shape Jamaica over the past 60 years.

Play I on the R&B,

want all my people to see.

We’re bubbling on the Hot 100,

jus’ like a mighty dread!

— From Bob Marley’s Roots, Rock, Reggae

THAT song from Marley’s 1976 album, Rastaman Vibration, summed up the reggae star’s objective to break into the American pop market. At the time of his death in May 1981 at age 36, Marley was nowhere near his rock or R&B counterparts in terms of record sales in the United States.

Three years after his death, Island Records, the company that helped introduce him to a global audience, released a compilation album that has become a catalogue monster. Legend is among the best-selling records of its kind, with over 25 million units sold.

The original edition contained 14 songs, 10 of which made the British pop chart. Most of them, including Is This Love, Could You be Loved, Three Little Birds, Waiting in Vain, and Satisfy my Soul, hear the militant Marley at his mellowest.

Dave Robinson of Ireland was a marketing executive at Island Records in the 1980s, and assigned to coordinate an album of Marley’s ‘greatest hits’. In a 2020 interview with the GoldenPlec.com website, he said it was not an easy assignment.

“I really loved his [Marley’s] music and I got an opportunity to put out the record and market it. Although he was moderately famous he was really a cult figure in terms of record sales, so Legend has changed that quite a bit,” he recalled. “A ‘greatest hits’ is a marketing exercise, in a lot of ways. You’re able to pick and choose some of the hits and some of the obscure stuff that’s great. A more objective person who is outside the circle, if they know what to do they’ll make a better job,” Robinson added. “I did a lot of ‘greatest hits’ records over the years for major labels, but ‘greatest hits’ are mainly big, big successful sellers because the artiste is dead, because then they don’t interfere with the person putting the record out.”

As of August 30, Legend — which also includes standards like No Woman No Cry, Get Up, Stand Up and Exodus — has spent 745 weeks on Billboard magazine’s 200 Album Chart, and 1,044 weeks on the UK Albums Chart.

It has been reissued and repackaged with deluxe, remixed and 30th anniversary editions. Originally released on vinyl, the change in music formats including compact disc and digital has seen sales of Legend soar.

Robinson, who made his name as a photographer covering stars such as The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, said Legend’s cover photo of a thoughtful Marley was a winner.

“When Island had signed Bob he was inclined to have a very military look to him. He was always photographed in camouflage clothes and he looked a bit hard. I think a lot of people thought he didn’t like white people which is not true, but they pushed him in the wrong direction [visually], I thought,” he explained. “To sell a ‘greatest hits’ to the public you’ve got to find the right kind of vibe, the right look and feel. It took us about three months to find that picture because I was looking for a softer picture, a more contemplative picture. That happens to be Haile Selassie’s ring he’s wearing, and that was the only picture I think that had that ring in it.”

Ultimately, it is the classic songs that have made Legend a best-seller and earned Bob Marley his place on the Hot 100.