Bob Marley died on the morning of Monday, May 11, 1981, at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami. He was 36. He had been flown in by chartered jet from a private clinic in West Germany the previous Thursday, UPI reported; specialists there judged that the cancer had spread to his brain, lungs and liver and that further treatment was pointless. The Washington Post noted that rumours of his illness had circulated for months and been repeatedly denied by Island Records.

The Gleaner’s report from the week records the last hours: he was in his room with his wife Rita, his mother Cedella Booker and his attorney and travelling companion Diane Jobson. He asked Rita to fetch something from his South Miami home. He died before she returned. He had stopped in Miami, the paper explained, because the daily treatment his illness required was not available in Jamaica — where he was headed to receive the Order of Merit in person.

Order of Merit

The Government had conferred the Order of Merit, Jamaica’s third-highest honour, in April 1981; the Gleaner Company gave him a Certificate of Merit for his contribution to entertainment the same month. Prime Minister Edward Seaga’s statement on his death called him “a cultural ambassador” who “was primarily responsible for Jamaica’s reggae music gaining worldwide acceptance,” per UPI. The Gleaner called him “the biggest-selling recording artiste in the history of Jamaican music, having sold well over 20 million records.”

The state funeral

The Government announced full state honours. The body was flown home from Miami that week and lay in state in the 10,000-seat National Arena in Kingston on May 20 and 21. The funeral on Thursday, May 21, combined Ethiopian Orthodox and Rastafari rites, the Jamaica Observer records, with Seaga delivering the eulogy. Michael Manley, now Leader of the Opposition, and Seaga met and shook hands in the Arena — the first time since Marley had joined their hands at the National Stadium three years earlier, the Observer later noted. The procession passed the Ethiopian Orthodox Church on its way out of the city, and the body travelled to Nine Mile in St Ann, the hill village where he was born, where a mausoleum was built.

What he left

Eight studio albums for Island in his lifetime, from Catch a Fire to Uprising (1980), the last released in his lifetime and the home of “Redemption Song.” A record company, Tuff Gong, at 56 Hope Road. A family of musicians whose work fills the rest of this archive. And a body of song that the world has not stopped playing: Legend, the 1984 compilation, remains the best-selling reggae album ever made.

Listen and dig deeper

Sources: UPI — “Reggae superstar Bob Marley dead at age 36” (May 12, 1981); The Washington Post — “Marley Dies in Miami” (May 12, 1981); UPI — “Reggae superstar to receive full state honors” (May 13, 1981); Jamaica Gleaner — “Bob Marley loses eight-month battle with cancer” (from the Gleaner of May 1981, republished 2022); Jamaica Observer — “The day Bob Marley died” (May 10, 2020); Jamaica Observer — “Recollections of the One Love Peace Concert” (April 21, 2013).

Editor’s note: This entry is part of the JamaicansMusic online museum — a career timeline assembled from the archive. It is dated to the events it documents; every claim is drawn from the linked sources.