Bass player, musical director for Bob Marley and Wailers
Aston Barrett, who as the bass player and musical director for the Wailers — both with Bob Marley and for decades after the singer’s death in 1981 — crafted the hypnotic rhythms and complex melodies that helped elevate reggae to international acclaim, died Feb. 3 in Miami. He was 77.
The cause of death, at a hospital, was heart failure after a series of strokes, according to his son Aston Barrett Jr., a drummer who took over the Wailers from his father in 2016.
Mr. Barrett was already well known around Jamaica as a session musician when, in 1969, Marley asked him and his brother, Carlton, a drummer, to join the Wailers as the band’s rhythm section.
More than anyone else, the collaboration between Marley and his bassist turned both the Wailers and reggae itself into a global phenomenon during the 1970s.
Marley wrote and sang the songs and was the band’s soulfully charismatic frontman. Mr. Barrett arranged and often produced the music. He also kept the band organized during its constant touring, earning him the nickname Family Man — or, to his close friends, Fams.
“Family Man was a genius,” Wayne Jobson, a reggae producer, said in a text message. “As the architect and arranger of Bob Marley’s songs, he took reggae to the stratosphere.”
And that’s to say nothing about his playing. He provided the uniquely melodic bass on all the Wailers’ biggest hits, including “Jammin’,” “Three Little Birds” and “I Shot the Sheriff,” and in doing so he helped make laid-back yet complex bass lines a staple of the reggae sound.
Some people called Mr. Barrett a “ninja” bassist for his ability to jump around unexpectedly, playing slow and brooding on one song and light and playful on the next. He got his unique sound from playing a Fender jazz bass, with stainless steel flatwound strings that were custom made for him by Fender.
“It’s almost like a fire in the hearth on a cold night,” Vivien Goldman, a music journalist who wrote about Mr. Barrett for years, said in a phone interview. “It just draws you in.”
Mr. Barrett served as a mentor for generations of reggae bassists, including, most notably, Robbie Shakespeare, who went on to team up with the drummer Sly Dunbar to form one of the most respected and prolific session duos in the world. (Shakespeare died in 2021.)
Mr. Barrett kept the Wailers going after Marley died of cancer at 36. The band continued to play its greatest hits from the Marley years, but with an evolving sound rooted in Mr. Barrett’s musical innovations. He held the group to a rigorous schedule; until he retired in 2016, he was playing up to 200 shows a year.
“When I’m playing the bass, it’s like I’m singing,” he told Bass Player magazine in 2007. “I compose a melodic line and see myself like I’m singing baritone. And when I decide to listen deep into the music — to all the different sections and instruments playing — I realized that the bass is the backbone, and the drum is the heartbeat of the music.”
Aston Francis Barrett was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on Nov. 22, 1946, the older son of Violet (Marshall) and Wilfred Barrett. His father was a blacksmith, a trade that Aston also plied before committing to music full time.
He and his brother were unable to afford storebought instruments, so they made their own. To craft a bass guitar, Aston took a two-by-four piece of wood and attached it to a square of plywood; down the neck he strung a curtain cord, with a wooden ashtray as the bridge. Carlton took a similarly DIY approach to his drums, scavenging old buckets and tin plates for his kit.
As soon as they had paying gigs, the two traded up their instruments, with Mr. Barrett playing for a time on a Höfner, the same brand favored by Paul McCartney. They played in a band called the Hippy Boys and were soon providing rhythm for the reggae innovator Lee “Scratch” Perry and his band, the Upsetters.
The band continued to tour and release albums after Marley’s death, though ticket and record sales declined. Legal troubles followed.
In 2001, Mr. Barrett sued the Marley family and Island Records, the Wailers’ longtime label, for approximately $115 million in royalties. A court dismissed the suit, ruling that he had signed an agreement for a one-time payment of $500,000 in 1994; the decision left him with almost $4 million in legal bills.