Dread - The half thats never been told: the real-life reggae adventures of Doctor Dread

Livicated* to all those who help others and are not only focused on their own self-betterment.

*I and I do not use the word dedicated as we choose instead to focus on life.

The truth is an offense, but not a sin...
from Jah Live by Bob Marley & the Wailers

INTRODUCTION
by Bunny Wailer

I first met Doctor Dread in 1981 after the passing of my brother Robert Marley. This was around the time I released the Rock n Groove album, ended my licensing and distribution relationship with Island Records/Chris Blackwell, and moved with my brethren in developing Cash and Carry Records. We developed a close relationship with Doctor Dread through his respect for the culture of Rastafari. He has been and still is a favorite brother of I, Bunny Wailer, apart from being a favorite distributor of the great reggae music, and also a producer of great standards.

Doctor Dread is one of the few international producers to travel to Jamaica and engage the singers and musicians not only in business, but also as a unique people of Jamaica. He bought a home in Portland to extend that relationship. So I have always had a good feeling about him as a person, not just taking out and away but giving back.

Doctor Dread has been a very serious contributor to the global value of this great reggae music. RAS Records has been and somehow still is the record label responsible for so many of the talents, including myself, who have been established coming from Jamaicaand his eloquence surrounding this great music is enormous.

Our relationship is built on a trust in consigning and licensing records and grew toward our most major project, that of the Bob Marley Hall of Fame box set, for which we won a Grammy. Outside of the record business that Doctor Dread eventually sold to Sanctuary Records in 2003, we established a publishing agreement that keeps us in business today.

Apart from being a serious businessman, Doctor Dread to I is a brother, a father figure of two sons, and a family man with his wife Debbie running the publishing arm. As a couple they work well together. Doctor Dread has also been my road manager on tours of great memories along with Count Ossies band and Capleton, also several shows involving my nephews such as Ziggy, Steve, Ky-Mani, Julian, and Damian Marley (the Marley Clan). Doctor Dread once took us all to his home and we cooked a memorable feast.

During one of his most significant challenges related to his health, Doctor Dread reached out to me and we had many important reasonings on life where he deepened his faith in Rastafari.

Myself and Doc have never had any quarrel or financial problems working together for more than thirty years and even up until now, as he is still active as my publisher. Any difference of opinion has always been brought out in the open and worked through, such is the confidence of always aiming to do the right thing.

Doctor Dread, being true to himself, has moved on to producing and distributing food associated with the culture, and I know that whatever he is doing, he will be doing that which is beneficial and respectful to all that he has learned, taken, and given in his relationship to Jamaica and the Rastafari family. He has extended that relationship to Washington, DC, where he is often host to the Rastafari family in the Jamaican diaspora at times and events of significance.

I do hope that whatever is said of Doctor Dread and what he says of himself, that herein I have exalted a brothers relationship with I, Bunny Wailer.

One Love, One Heart, Lets Stay Together to Make Things Right. Yu heeeaar!

Hon. Neville O. Livingston O.J., C.D.

a.k.a. Bunny Wailer

FOREWORD

Forward ever, backward never...

Rasta philosophy

I give thanks for what I consider to be such an extraordinary life full of incredible experiences, people, and manifestations of a reality that are all unique to I and I. It is truly a gift to have been given the opportunity and blessed by the Creator to turn my passion and love of reggae music, Rastafari, and Jamaican culture into a business that afforded me a life where I could support my family and travel to every corner of the Earth, meeting the most remarkable of men and women. Ive also been granted the freedom to let my creative side be the force that has clearly guided me. While many people trod off to work each day and punch a time clock and have no real love for their jobs, and are only there to get a paycheck, I had the luxury of doing what I truly loved. A livity. My work became my life.

I believe that the creation of RAS (Real Authentic Sound) Records and Tafari Music (my publishing company) was a destiny that was set before I. And I and I must give thanks to the many artists and musicians who allowed me into their lives and who accepted me into their culture. The intimate relationships I have cultivated have been a remarkable inspiration for me. And the country of Jamaica has imbued within me a spirit that has greatly surpassed any feeling the country of my birth could have fed me. Imagine: A small little island in the Caribbean that gave rise to reggae music and the Rastafari way of life, both of which have reached to all parts of the Earth and had such a powerful influence on so many people from North America to Europe to Asia to Africa. Maybe it truly is the mythical Atlantis.

I never really had the intention of writing a book about my experiences, although I have been encouraged to do so by many people over the years. The main catalyst that triggered the desire to document my life was a book by Tad Hershorn entitled Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice. I saw many similarities between this jazz producers approach to music and the artists he worked with and my own. And knowing that a youth who worked for me at RAS when he was only sixteen years old and always exhibited a true passion for his work and whose integrity I always respected had started a small publishing company in New York which focused on Caribbean culture and writers, I decided to move forward with this project. Johnny Temple, the publisher of Akashic Books, has been a great inspiration for me. He has held onto his beliefs and not sold out to the corporate world but has instead chosen to maintain his freedom and keep his small, hard-working staff always reaching for their goals.

My approach to this book has been the same as how I would produce an album. Each chapter is a song. And I have layered them with different verses and choruses. Sometimes with a riff that is explosive and sometimes with a strum of tenderness. I have probably let a few skeletons escape from the closet and they are now dancing around out in the open. Maybe skanking down the street or just peering around a corner to see what is coming. If I have offended anyone, I do offer my apologies. My intention was only to let the truth be known from my own perspective.

(These days, a career in the music business is no longer a full-blown profession.) And although RAS Records clearly needed to make a profit to support myself and the artists and allow me to record albums that were not designed to make money but to expose a side of Jamaican culture, my alter egoas my friend Dawn Bunetta described itof Doctor Dread is still alive and well. (My birth name is Gary Himelfarb.)