Vincent Ford is credited with writing one of Reggae’s best-loved anthems, No Woman, No Cry (1974), the song that helped launch Bob Marley as an international music star, and bring the reggae genre popular in the Carribean to a global audience. The provenance of the song is hotly disputed by some Marley aficionados who claim that Marley himself wrote it and then credited it to his old friend, a fellow troubadour from their days growing up in the tough, crime-ridden ghetto of Trenchtown in Kingston, Jamaica. As Ford was a double paraplegic — confined to a wheelchair as a result of chronic diabetes — who ran a soup kitchen for the poor, it was claimed that Marley had attributed the song to Ford to enable him, as an act of philanthropy, to claim the royalties.
Others believe that Ford and Marley sat down one day in Ford’s flat and wrote the song together with Ford supplying the lyrics and Marley the melody. Marley confirmed in a 1975 interview that the song was penned at Ford’s flat while Ford himself always claimed that he wrote the song.
The song, an anthem for oppressed women, was inspired by Ford and Marley’s experience growing up in “Government Yard” in Trenchtown (now Bob Marley Yard), a public housing project comprising 16 cramped rooms in a tenement block.It is popularly claimed that while little time was spent inside the block, the tenants would gather around logwood fires at night to sup on communal broth and sing songs.
The song lyrics say: “I remember when we used to sit/ In the Government Yard in Trenchtown/ And then Georgie would make the fire lights/ And it was logwood burnin’ through the nights/ Then we would cook cornmeal porridge/ Of which I’ll share with you.”
Sometimes these sessions around the logfires would be a time to sing songs of comfort for local women who were victims of domestic violence. Hence the song’s ultimately uplifting refrain, “Everything’s gonna be alright”.
Ford, known as “Tata”, was able to live off the royalties for the rest of his life — which outlasted Marley’s by nearly 30 years. These considerable royalties were boosted by cover versions and samples by an eclectic group of artists, which includes Wyclef Jean, Joan Baez, the Fugees, Boney M, Pearl Jam, Jimmy Cliff and Faith Hill.
The royalty cheques helped to fund the Trenchtown soup kitchen. It still operates today and once doubled as a rehearsal studio for Marley and his band the Wailers. No Woman, No Cry first appeared on Marley’s album Natty Dread (1974). A rousing live version recorded at the Lyceum in London in 1975 became Marley’s first hit single in the UK. The song was voted No 37 in Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Ford was also credited with three songs from Marley’s album Rastaman Vibration: Positive Vibration, Crazy Baldhead and Roots, Rock, Reggae. Once again cynics claimed that Ford was not the original songwriter and that Marley credited the songs on the album to Ford and others, including his wife Rita, in order to avoid paying his record company a large portion of the royalties.
The debate over the authenticity of Ford’s songwriting for Marley continues to this day, but what is not in doubt is the deep and lasting friendship between them. Ford, who grew up in the same tenement block as the Marley family, taught Marley how to play the guitar. Five years his senior, the more streetwise Tata took Marley in hand, acting as a protective influence who kept the young Marley out of trouble on the streets of Trenchtown.
Diminutive in stature, Ford would later have both legs amputated as a result of his diabetes. A popular figure, Ford was often to be found at the Bob Marley museum in Kingston where he would keep Marley pilgrims entertained with a deep fund of personal anecdotes. Marley, who died of cancer, aged 36, in 1981, said of him: “Vincent Ford is a bredda from Trenchtown. Me and him used to sing long time. Me and him used to live in de kitchen together long, long time. Him good but him sick now.”
Ford is survived by two children.
Vincent Ford, songwriter, was born in 1940. He died of complications caused by diabetes on December 28, aged 68
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