BOB Marley’s place as one of pop music’s great singer-songwriters is assured through a remarkable catalogue. With recording and touring taking up much of his creative time, he had little room for other artistes, but The Gong did produce Escape From Babylon, the 1976 album by American singer Martha Velez.

Of Puerto Rican heritage, Velez came to Jamaica in 1975 and recorded the eight-song set with The Wailers, Marley’s band, and The I-Threes, his harmony singers. Escape From Babylon was released by Sire Records which distributed Madonna’s platinum albums in the 1980s.

Velez was born in New York City and was a classically trained singer. She is the older sister of Jerry Velez who played percussion for Jimi Hendrix at the Woodstock Festival in 1969.

That year, Martha Velez’ first album Fiends and Angels was released by Sire. It featured an all-star cast of musicians including guitarist Eric Clapton and Mitch Mitchell, drummer for Hendrix’ band, The Experience.

Her sessions with Marley and The Wailers took place at Harry J Studio in east Kingston where the reggae star had worked on his Natty Dread and Rastaman Vibration albums. The Wailers/I-Threes’ distinctive sound can be heard throughout Escape From Babylon which contained originals like Money Man, There You Are and Disco Night, which Velez co-wrote with Marley.

It also had covers of the Marley-penned Bend Down Low and I’m Hurting Inside (done as Happiness).

In a 2015 interview with Ethnomusicology Review, Velez spoke about her association with Marley and reggae.

“I had no thoughts of working with Bob Marley himself, but Sire told me they’d sent him a couple of cuts from my album and he’d loved my voice and was interested. By then my sense of what I wanted to do with music and wanted to say within music had evolved in a different way,” she explained. “Working with him, I was really trying to say something and yet not be too pretentious about it, because my life was very different from his life. We finally did get into a groove but I ended up doing a lot of my vocals up in New York. It was simply because some of the equipment in Jamaica used an electrical current that wasn’t compatible with US currents, so we were getting all this strange sounding distortion,” Velez added. “After that album, Escape from Babylon, I really wanted to do more reggae, but even though that album did well and found its niche, the record company wasn’t interested.”

Velez recorded two more albums, the last being 1989’s Angels of The Future Past. She concentrated on acting, appearing in top-rated television series including Falcon Crest and L A Law.

Now 73, she lives in California. Marley died in May 1981 at age 36.