NADINE Sutherland was 11 years old when she won the Tastee Talent Contest in 1979. Her prize package included a recording contract with Bob Marley’s Tuff Gong label. In the weeks that followed her win in the popular amateur competition, Sutherland’s father contacted Tuff Gong’s legal counsel Diane Jobson and a date was set for an initial meeting with reggae’s megastar.
“I recall getting to the gates and daddy told the security that we were there to see Diane Jobson, as she was the point person at Tuff Gong. I distinctly remember her coming out to greet us and fixing her tam which held up her long, flowing locks. She took us around to the side of the building where Bob was leaned against the side of his Land Rover. I can see him now. He was wearing dark denim jeans and shirt with the sleeves rolledup,” Sutherland recalled in an interview with the Jamaica Observer.
“Diane said: ‘See the little girl here.’ The look on his face remains with me to this day. In my 11-year-old head he was just beaming. That smile… it’s like the man just clean him teeth. He was glowing. It was an ethereal moment. My father, on the other hand, was ‘fanning out’. This was Bob Marley and my father was a pan-Africanist and identified with calls for equal rights and justice for all, so meeting Bob Marley was a big thing for him.”
The enormity of the moment was lost on the young singer. She admitted that it was later that the magnitude of her association with the reggae king became apparent.
The Tuff Gong deal resulted in her first single, Starvation. The song was written by long-time Marley collaborator Sangie Davis and the finer details were arrived at between Tuff Gong and Sutherland’s father.
“It was all organised for me. Sangie taught me the words and music. Then came the day of the recording. We were doing the preliminaries, such as checking for pitch and key with the musicians. This is when I started to get excited as I had never been inside a studio before. They had me standing as we laid the rhythm and did the overdubs. Then the door opened. I didn’t even know Bob was there. He came into the studio and looked at me and said: ‘Unnu put har pon a chair, nuh.’ Everybody started to scramble to find me a chair. He then went into the control booth and I remember him saying to adjust the bass line and made about two other suggestions and left us to do the recording. I was in awe,” she said.
