On November 1, Jamaica lost a national treasure and I lost a wonderful friend. Alvin “Seeco” Patterson, percussionist with Bob Marley and The Wailers, passed away two months shy of his 91st birthday.

Over the 25 years I knew Seeco, either in the recording studio or simply reasoning on a quiet afternoon, I was always amazed at the storied history of so humble a man and the odyssey that his life has been.

As perhaps Bob Marley’s closest confidant, Seeco loved to reminisce about how he met a teenaged Marley in Trench Town, whom he took under his wing. Seeco encouraged Marley in music, and was particularly proud of having arranged the first audition of The Wailers for [Clement] “Coxson” Dodd at Studio One in July 1964.

Seeco would laugh recalling how The Wailers returned to him disappointed after Coxson rejected the group at first; it was only on Seeco’s orders that the young group returned to Coxson to sing their new, uptempo ska song, Simmer Down. The rest, of course, is history.

In spite of Seeco’s own musical forays as a youth, playing in particular with calypso artiste Lord Flea, he worked as a bauxite miner into the mid-1960s. He once told me a dramatic story about an explosion in the mine canteen that sent him flying from the building – minus his shoes. It was this event, he recalled with his characteristic hearty laugh, that convinced him to give up bauxite and turn to music full-time.

While Seeco began to participate in recordings with the original Wailers, he became a full-fledged member of the group with the departure of Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1973. From that point on, he played on virtually every recording and live performance Marley would make for the rest of his life.

If there was one thing Seeco loved to talk about, it was his life-long friendship with Marley, his “likkle friend”. Seeco was proud to tell of how he never left Marley – from their earliest days in Trench Town to Marley’s last days in a cancer clinic in West Germany.

You may think that you are unfamiliar with the vital contributions Seeco made to Jamaican music, but you most certainly aren’t. Every time you hear a Bob Marley song, you hear Seeco shaking a tambourine or perhaps playing a repeater drum. He once told me that, when recording the iconic track Jamming, he simply picked up a milk bottle sitting on the floor and began to hit it with a stick. That piece of percussive drive, delivered every two bars throughout the song, gives the track so much of its vital essence.

His simple genius is evidenced, too, on tracks like Crazy Baldhead, where during the drum and bass breakdown he engages four different percussive instruments in what can only be described as a ‘conversation’ with each other – simple greatness and innovation and key to The Wailers’ sound.

So, next time you hear Bob Marley, listen for the percussion and think of Seeco. Not only will it train your ear, but it will connect you to the root of the music. The heartbeat.

I will miss Seeco for the rest of my life, but I will smile every time I hear his percussion talking to me. Let Seeco be venerated as key to the foundation upon which Jamaican music has been built.

May his memory be a blessing.

* Tomaz Jardim is a musician, reggae enthusiast, collector, and professor of history. He lives in Toronto.