Overview
The songs on the album are regarded as the finest written by Bunny Wailer, and explore themes such as repatriation ("Dreamland"), and his arrest for marijuana possession ("Fighting Against Conviction", originally titled "Battering Down Sentence"). The album features some of Jamaica's leading musicians and also contributions from Bob Marley and Peter Tosh of The Wailers on backing vocals, and the Wailers rhythm section of Carlton and Aston Barrett on some of the tracks. The high quality of the songs and musicians makes Blackheart Man one of the greatest reggae albums of all time.
The origins of the album title goes back to Wailer's childhood in the Jamaican countryside, where he grew up in the same little village as his friend Bob Marley. Wailer said:
| “ | Well, the Blackheart Man is a very serious fable; when we were kids, we all grew up hearing about this Blackheart Man, and we were told that you had to be careful of strangers who might walk up to you and invite you into a situation, or you might be found in the lonely countryside, or in the gullies, or anywhere that this individual might have shown up, and then he would take your heart out. So it brought fear on all the youths of that time when they heard the name, Blackheart Man. So I did the album based on my experiences. | ” |
Bunny Wailer himself considers Blackheart Man to be his best solo album. As he told Jamaican newspaper the Daily Gleaner in June 2009:
| “ | I will make good albums, yes, for I have made good albums - Liberation, Protest, Struggle, My Father's House, Rock and Groove. All them album is really good album - Marketplace. But Blackheart Man is really an exceptional album, as to the valuation of the message and the amount of people who have received that message and have made themselves better people through them lives within the spiritual and cultural settings that the Blackheart Man exhibits. | ” |
This is one of the three Wailers solo albums released in 1976, along with Peter Tosh's album Legalize It and Bob Marley's Rastaman Vibration. The album was listed in the 1999 book The Rough Guide: Reggae: 100 Essential CDs.
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