For contry people in Jamaica, the capitol Kingston was the city of their dreams, the land of opportunity. The reality was that Kingston had little work to offer, yet through the Fifties and Sixties, people flooded to the city. The newcomers, despite their rapid disillusion with the capital, seldom returned to the rural parishes. Instead, they squatted in the shanty towns that grew up in western Kingston, the most notorious of which was Trench Town (so named because it was built over a ditch that drained the sewage of old Kingston).

Bob Marley, barely into his teens, moved to Kingston in the late Fifties. Like many before them, Marley and his mother eventually settled in Trench Town. His friends were other street youths, also impatient with their place in Jamaican society. One friend in particular was Neville O'Riley Livingston, known as Bunny, with whom Bob took his first hesitant musical steps.

The two youths were faxhinated by the extraordinary music they could pick up fro American radio stations. In particular there was one New Orleans station broadcasting the latest tunes by such artists as Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Curtis Mayfield and Brook Benton, Bob and Bunny also paid clase attention to the black vocal groups, such as the Drifters, who were extremely popular in Jamaica.

When Bob quit school he seemed to have but one ambition: music. Although he took a job in a welding shop, Bob spent all his free time with Bunny, perfecting their vocal abilities. They were helped by one of Trench Town's famous residents, the singer Joe Higgs who held informal lessons for aspiring vocalists in the tenement yards. It was at one of those sessions that Bob and Bunny met Peter McIntosh, another youth withe big musical ambitions.

In 1962 Bob Marley auditioned for a local music entrepreneur called Leslie Kong. Impressed by the quality of Bob's vocals, Kong took the young singer into the studio to cut some tracks, the first of which, called "Judge Not", was released on the Beverley's label. It was Marley's first record.

The other tunes - including "Terror" and "One Cup Of Coffee" - received no airplay and attracted little attention. At the very least, however, they confirmed Marley's ambiton to be a singer. By the following year Bob had decided the way forward was with a group. He linked up with Bunny and Peter to form The Wailing Wailers.

The new group had a mentor, a Rastafarian hand drummer called Alvin Patterson, who introduced the youths to Clement Dodd, a record producer in Kingston. In the summer of 1963 Dodd auditioned The Wailing Wailers and, pleased with the results, agreed to record the group.

It was the time of ska music, the hot new dancefloor music with a pronounced back-beat. Its origins incorporated influences from Jamaica's African traditions but, more immediately, from the burgeoning sound systems on the streets of Kingston. Clement - Sir Coxsone - Dodd was one of the city's finest sound system men.