Bob Marley
Singer-songwriter
Bob Marley, born Robert Nesta Marley on 6 February 1945 in Nine Mile, Jamaica, became the most famous reggae artist in history, and for years a persistent rumour has linked him to Wales through his father, British Army officer Captain Norval Marley, said to have hailed from Prestatyn in North Wales. famouswelsh.com wants to be upfront about this story rather than repeat it uncritically: it does not hold up.
Research published in 2004 by genealogist Joanne Gallacher found that Norval Marley was in fact born in Jamaica to a Jamaican mother and an English father from Surrey. Although he served in the British Army and believed at the time he had been stationed in Wales, records show he was actually posted near Oswestry, just across the border in Shropshire, England. The claim of a Prestatyn birthplace or family home appears to be a case of border confusion rather than fact, and no reliable source supports the further story sometimes repeated locally that Marley himself worked at a factory or holiday camp in the town. FamousWelsh.com has found nothing to substantiate that.
What is genuinely documented, however, is Marley's own performing history in Wales. He and the Wailers played an electrifying show at Ninian Park, Cardiff in 1976, and on 12 July 1980, as part of the Uprising tour, Marley played the Deeside Leisure Centre in Queensferry, North Wales, one of the very last concerts of his career before his death from cancer in May 1981. That real, documented visit, rather than any inherited ancestry, is the only honest basis for his place on this site.