Jamaican International reggae legend Bunny Wailer, who co-founded "The Wailers'' with his childhood friend Bob Marley in the 1960s, died at the age of 73.
The Jamaican singer died on Tuesday, March 2, at the Andrews Memorial Hospital in the Jamaican parish of St. Andrew, his manager, Maxine Stowe confirmed.
The cause of death is yet to be revealed. But Local newspapers had reported that the singer whose real name was Neville O’Riley Livingston, suffered his second stroke in July 2020 and has been in and out of the hospital since.
Bunny Wailers and Bob Marley became an international sensation in the early ’70s, and Wailer’s harmonies were a key part of their sound. But Wailer didn’t like leaving Jamaica to tour, and he left the Wailers in 1973, recording several solo roots reggae albums that passionately extolled Rastafarian principles. After Bob Marley’s 1981 death, Wailer recorded Marley tributes, and he also went on to experiment with dancehall in the genre’s ’80s infancy.
In his later years, Bunny Wailer won three Grammys, was awarded Jamaica’s Order Of Merit and formed his political party, the United Progressive Party. Wailer continued to tour and record into the ’00s.
