Peter Tosh was a renowned reggae artist and founding member of the band the Wailers, which gave reggae artist Bob Marley his start.

Synopsis

Reggae artist Peter Tosh was born in rural Jamaica on October 19, 1944. There, he started the band the Wailers with Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer, and the three rose to fame as successful musicians. Tosh enjoyed musical success after leaving the Wailers and embarking on a solo career. Tosh was killed during an attempted robbery at his Jamaica home in 1987. In 2016, his family opened a museum dedicated to the artist in Kingston, Jamaica.

Early Life

Internationally renowned reggae artist Peter Tosh was born Winston Hubert McIntosh on October 19, 1944, in Westmoreland, Jamaica, to a pair of parents too young to raise him. Instead, Tosh was raised by his aunt in Grange Hill. Early in his childhood, and inspired by American radio stations, Tosh exhibited a talent for singing and learned how to play guitar — one he stole from his mother’s church, according to a review by the Los Angeles Review of Books of Colin Grant’s The Natural Mystics: Marley, Tosh and Walker.

In the early 1960s, Tosh moved from the countryside to the Trench Town slum of Kingston and began selling sugarcane juice from a cart. In was then that he met Robert Nesta Marley (Bob Marley) and Neville O’Riley Livingston (Bunny Wailer). All three began visiting voice teacher Joe Higgs, and, as they developed their musical talents, decided to form a band called The Wailers in 1962.

Untimely Death

As his career took off, Tosh began traveling the world, but he returned to Jamaica often to see family and friends. He was killed there on September 11, 1987, at the age of 42.

According to the Associated Press, at around 8:30 p.m. that day, three armed men on motorcycles arrived at Tosh’s home in the Kingston suburb of St. Andrew, entered the house and attempted to rob its occupants, Tosh and six others, including his common-law wife Andrea Marlene Brown and health-food maker Wilton “Doc” Brown; The gunmen shot all seven after they refused to give up their money, the AP said.

SOURCE –    BIOGRAPHY.COM