Cherry Green:CHERRY GREEN, who has died of a heart attack aged 65, was one of the original members of The Wailers, the band that became Bob Marley's legendary Jamaican backing group.
Although her tenure was brief, she made an important contribution to the popularity of the ska form and to the development of Marley's career.
Born Ermine Ortense Bramwell in the upper section of Trench Town, a district of west Kingston that was later home to many popular singers, she was given the nickname Cherry at an early age, due to her light-skinned complexion, referred to as "red" in the Jamaican colloquial parlance.
Her vocal skills were noted at an early age.
In 1962, at the age of 18, she began harmonising with other aspiring singers in the neighbourhood, schooled by Joe Higgs, who had recorded a number of popular songs in a duo with Roy Wilson.
Under his tutelage, a group was eventually formed with Marley, his stepbrother Neville "Bunny" Livingston, Peter McIntosh (later to become Tosh) and Junior Braithwaite, initially called The Teenagers and, later, The Wailers.
Because her half-brother Carlton had the surname Green, the rest of the group referred to her as Cherry Green, probably unaware of her actual surname. To add to the confusion, she has sometimes been referred to as Cherry Smith, for reasons that remain unclear.
Marley had already recorded a few songs as a solo vocalist for Leslie Kong in 1961, having been told about Kong by Desmond Dekker. He passed an audition conducted by Jimmy Cliff, but the songs he recorded for Kong were not popular. In the group's early days, Braithwaite was the most prominent lead singer.
Cherry rehearsed with the group for two years and was present when they passed an audition for Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd at Studio One in July 1964.
However, as she had a child to support and held a regular day job, she was unable to attend the group's first recording session and was replaced by Beverley Kelso, another neighbourhood hopeful who had impressed the group at a talent contest a few days earlier.
Their debut session yielded the hit Simmer Down and the Wailers rose rapidly in the ranks at Studio One, recording profusely for Dodd. Although Cherry was absent from most of the group's recording sessions, she was more in evidence after Braithwaite's emigration to the US.
She contributed to a handful of their most notable early works at Studio One, including the hit Lonesome Feelings and the original version of There She Goes, both recorded in October 1964, as well as an odd ska rendition of Tom Jones's What's New Pussycat?, recorded in July 1965, and a spiritual called Let the Lord Be Seen in You, recorded a few months later.
Ultimately, Cherry's domestic situation hampered her involvement in the Wailers. The money she received for her contributions was seldom enough to buy a new dress and, with her daughter to care for, she eventually made her permanent exit from the group in late 1966, around the time that Marley joined his mother in Delaware for an extended stay.
Many of her peers were then departing in the hopes of obtaining a better standard of living, and in 1969 she followed suit by moving to Miami, where she found work as a nurse.
She later moved to New York and then to southern California, where she had a cheerful reunion with Marley in 1976, following his appearance at the Santa Monica civic centre. She also lived for a time in Indiana, where her granddaughter still resides.
After she retired from nursing, Cherry moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, where she married her second husband, Thomas Barker, three years ago.
Her husband, her daughter Audrey, granddaughter Stephanie and half-brother Carlton survive her.
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Ermine Ortense Dempsey-Barker (Cherry Green): born August 22nd, 1943; died September 24th, 2008