Lyrical genius of Bob Andy to be celebrated; new book coming

Preparations were in high gear last year for the October 28 birthday tribute to the legendary singer and prolific songwriter Keith ‘Bob Andy’ Anderson. But a Category 5 hurricane had other plans and made landfall in Jamaica that same day, and the recovery effort became the talking point for the rest of the year.

Still buoyed with hope and determined to keep his father’s legacy alive, Bob Andy’s son, Godfrey ‘Bobby’ Anderson, has marked a date in his calendar to honour his father this year.

“It is important for us to remember the huge contributions made by icons such as my Dad ... we have several of them in the music industry. This year, we will be having the tribute at Night Market on October 27,” Anderson told The Gleaner.

Night Market is the weekly Tuesday night space on Hillcrest Ave in St Andrew where art and crafts, music, and food meet and mingle in a festive and wholesome atmosphere. There family, friends and fans will pay tribute at the event that is being dubbed ‘Celebrating The Lyrical Genius of Bob Andy on his 82nd Earthstrong’.

For the tribute to Bob Andy, live performances will come from Fred Locks, Deh Deh Blacks of Heptones fame, Empress Chai, and Singer J, who is Bob Andy’s nephew. Last year, it was Singer J’s platform, Rub-A-Dub Tuesdays, that was earmarked to host the tribute. Special guest selector next Tuesday will be pioneering deejay and sound system selector Welton Irie.

“Welton Irie is very knowledgeable and goes way back with the music. I needed an elder who knows my father full catalogue as singer and songwriter to do this tribute,” Anderson explained.

He recalled that his father, who is recognised as one of reggae’s greatest and most influential songwriters, released a lot of songs in England in the mid-’70s that did extremely well there but were not played a lot in Jamaica.

“My father even had songs doing well in Brazil that he didn’t know about. When he went to Brazil, the promoter there told him that there were three songs that he had to sing. My Dad didn’t even remember those songs ... but he had to relearn them for the show. That’s the way of this music business ... people bootleg your songs, and you don’t earn a cent. A lot of that reached my father,” Anderson said.

That is one of the reasons for him writing the biography of Bob Andy, a tell-all book that he hopes to have out in time for Reggae Month 2027.

“My father was writing his own book about his journey, but that was focused more on Studio One years. He wrote about the Wailers, meeting with Bob Marley. He had an audience of one with Marley ... he was like Marley’s therapist and Marley was my father’s therapist,” Anderson said, deliberately stopping himself from sharing the nuggets in the biography.

Anderson, through this book, wants to set a couple records straight and also educate the younger generation, in particular, about the greatness of Bob Andy. And he admits that he will be stepping on some toes, but he feels truth is important, and he knows that this is something his father would want him to do.

“This book that I am writing is about my father’s entire journey ... the good, the bad and the ugly ... if someone did ugly to him, I have to tell it” he said. “He didn’t have much growing up. He wrote so many songs and never collected a cent because others took them. And he also wrote a lot of songs for other artistes, and people don’t know that it’s Bob Andy who is the songwriter.”

He shared that he was on the road with his father in the last years, and he kept on telling him stories about his life. It wasn’t until after he died that he realised that “he was giving me all this information for me to write this book”.

He is still not fully settled on the title of the biography although he did get some suggestions.

“Cedella Marley told me that I should use the title of one of my father’s songs... and I thought about I Want To Go Back Home. But ... my father is not Marley, whose song titles are well known. If I say Too Experienced, people will think it’s Barrington Levy, so I want to stay away from song titles,” Anderson said.

He lamented that even now there is ongoing litigation as it relates to some of his father’s songs.

“We are still in court with those songs on The Songbook. Those things that my father wrote about were from life ... and he couldn’t earn from them. He was living with that albatross around his neck ... anyway, when we celebrate his birthday next Tuesday, people will simply be enjoying Bob Andy’s music ... no more Melissa or anybody else can interfere with this,” Bob Andy’s son declared.

Bob Andy was born on October 28, 1944, and died on March 27, 2020. In October 2006, the Jamaican Government conferred upon him the Order of Distinction in the rank of Commander for his massive contributions to the development of Jamaican music.

yasmine.peru@gleanerjm.com