Bob Marley’s Mother Dies

Cedella Booker, the mother of Jamaican music legend Bob Marley, has died. She was 81.

Booker died Tuesday in her sleep at her home in Miami, apparently from natural causes, family spokesman Jerome Hamilton said.

Known as "Mother B," Cedella Booker was also a performer in her own right, recording solo and collaboration albums.  She  performed in the United States, Jamaica, Europe, Mexico and Africa. In addition, she wrote ‘Bob Marley, My Son’, a book that celebrated her son’s life.

Booker, a Jamaica native, was 18 when she married Norval Marley, a British man 32 years her senior. Their son brought Jamaican reggae music to international prominence, becoming its international image. Bob Marley died in Miami of a brain tumor in 1981 at age 36.

After Norval Marley died in 1955, Booker married an American man and settled in Delaware. She wrote two biographies of her famous son and recorded two albums, "Awake Zion!" and "Smilin’ Island of Song."