Willie Simpson

Tag: Jamaican music

  • Bob Marley, Pimper's Paradise

    “Every need got an ego to feed.”  If that’s not the lyric of a master, than nothing is.  “Pimper’s Paradise,” from 1980’s Uprising LP, is one of Bob’s best songs.  Anyone else obsessed with the way he sings “Well-ell aelll..?”  How about the line, “Now she is blusing when there ain’t no blues…?”  I’m not…

  • Bob Marley, Duppy Conqueror, Rare Studio Take

    We’re back in the 1974 Catch a Fire sessions as Bob Marley and the Wailers cut a fifth version of “Duppy Conqueror.”  What is a “duppy,” and why is Bob conquering them?  Interesting question.  Well, in Jamaica, duppy is slang for ghost, and Bob was thinking about opening up a Jamaican branch of the Ghostbusters. …

  • Bob Marley, Stir it Up

    Part 55 of my countdown grooves on with Bob Marley’s gem “Stir it Up.”  Written in 1967, this was one of Bob’s first songs to gain international fame when Johnny Nash covered it and made it a top 20 hit in 1972 in both Britain and America.  The song is one of Bob’s incredible love…