Ashton Francis Barrett life History, biography, cause of death, wife, children, career, education

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 store-bought 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 D.I.Y. approach to his drums, scavenging old buckets and tin plates for his kit.

The brothers practiced in a basement, where they could take advantage of the reverberations off the concrete walls.

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.

Mr. Barrett and Mr. Marley built their relationship on mutual admiration. Mr. Barrett first heard the Wailers when someone played their song “Simmer Down” at a party. He was transfixed.

Well, I tell you, I listened to that music so deep, I feel like I was a part of that group and that it was me and my brother who do that song,” he said in an interview for “Wailing Blues: The Story of Bob Marley’s Wailers” (2009), by John Masouri.

Mr. Marley likewise heard the Barrett brothers playing and sought them out. They began backing the Wailers in 1969 and soon left Mr. Perry’s band to join the Wailers exclusively. When two of the original members, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer, left the band in 1973, Mr. Marley and the Barretts reformed the band around themselves.

The band continued to tour and release albums after Mr. 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.

Mr. Barrett continued to tour, insisting that there were no hard feelings. He brought on his son as drummer in 2009 and eventually gave him control of the Wailers when he stepped down as musical director in 2016. Aston Jr. plays his father in the movie “Bob Marley: One Love,” set to be released on Feb. 14.

Along with his son, Mr. Barrett’s survivors include his wife, Angela; two other sons, Floyd and Kevin; three daughters, Novelette Lindsay, Shadona Barrett and Ramona Barrett; and his sisters, Narma, Cherry and Winsome Barrett. His brother, Carlton, was murdered in Kingston in 1987.

Mr. Barrett claimed to have more than 35 other children, as well as many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, though he did not maintain relationships with all of them.

He moved to Miami in 2001, but he retained a home in Jamaica and returned there frequently.

Though he was long revered in the reggae community as a founding father, recognition outside it was late in coming. In 2020, Bass Player magazine put Mr. Barrett at the top of its list of “20 legendary players who shaped the sound of the electric bass.” That same year, Rolling Stone ranked him 28th on its list of the 50 greatest bassists of all time.

And in 2021, he was made a commander in the Order of Distinction, one of Jamaica’s highest civilian honors, for rendering “outstanding and important services” to the country.

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.