by Howard Campbell
SOUTH FLORIDA – “Legend”, the best-of album by Bob Marley and The Wailers, has notched yet another milestone nearly 40 years after its release.
The compilation clocked its 800th week on the Billboard 200 (album) chart, only the second album to accomplish that remarkable feat. Dark Side of The Moon by British band Pink Floyd is first to achieve the status, and is closing in on 1,000 weeks in that chart.
Legend is currently number 106 on the Billboard 200. Reissued and repackaged several times, it has sold over 25 million copies globally.
Released by Island Records in 1984, three years after Marley’s death, it contains some of the reggae king’s biggest hits including the ubiquitous One Love, Exodus, Waiting in Vain, Three Little Birds, Redemption Song and Jamming.
Those songs helped make the Jamaican Rastafarian world-famous. Before going on a solo career in 1974, Marley was a member of The Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston (later Bunny Wailer), with whom he recorded two critically-acclaimed albums (Catch A Fire and Burnin’) in 1973.
Natty Dread, his first album for Island Records, was released in 1974. Marley died in May, 1981 in Miami at age 36.
