Longtime reggae collector, Bob Marley expert, radio host, and 82-year-old author Roger Steffens has sold his enormous archive of vinyl and other memorabilia — widely acknowledged as the largest and most comprehensive collection of Marley artifacts in the world — for an undisclosed “multimillion-dollar” sum.
The archive, previously valued at up to $3 million, was acquired by Josef Bogdanovich, first cousin of the late director Peter Bogdanovich and one of four heirs to his grandfather Martin’s StarKist Tuna fortune.
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“It’s a privilege and a huge responsibility to the culture of Jamaica,” Bogdanovich told Variety about the purchase. “It’s a monumental undertaking, but the work is so powerful.”
Steffens, who has known Bogdanovich for more than four decades, commented, “Of all the people who have tried to buy this collection for the past 37 years, he is the most qualified to do all the things necessary to preserve and promote it, and to return this history to Jamaica without any political control.”
Steffens estimates that he has spent around $500,000 on his collection.
Now in his early eighties, Bogdanovich moved from California to Jamaica in 1999. There, he founded the Downsound label to record and promote reggae and dancehall artists like Nanko, I-Maroon, Fantan Mojah, and Jah Cure. Over the years, he has also acquired the Montego Bay-based summer Reggae Sumfest (the successor to Sunsplash) and Sting festivals — and now he has a unique, world-class collection as well.
“For me, it’s the artifacts that come straight from the people, the trinkets from all over the world” that make the collection special, Bogdanovich says. He intends to place the artifacts in a museum he originally wanted to build alongside the seaside Catherine Hall Entertainment Center, home of Sumfest. However, geological issues have forced him to look elsewhere for a location. He now plans to build it in Montego Bay and has hired Robert Santelli of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Grammy Museum as a creative advisor. Even though there is already a Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Steffens’ archive is acknowledged as the largest collection of the legendary musician’s artifacts in the world.
Steffens’ collection began in 1973 with a used copy of the Wailers’ first album, “Catch a Fire,” which he bought after reading an adulatory article in Rolling Stone. He eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career and ultimately became a voiceover artist and audiobook narrator, as well as the long-running radio host for KCRW’s “Reggae Beat” and the syndicated “Reggae Beat International” show. He was also a photographer, editor of The Beat magazine, and author of eight books on Marley. He first showcased his archives for the public in 2001, curating the collection with a sprawling eight-month exhibit in Long Beach, California, dubbed “The World of Reggae,” which coincided with Marley receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The vast collection includes reggae posters, album covers, buttons, live cassettes and interviews, rare white label Trojan releases, magazine articles, folk art, paintings, and Haile Selassie memorabilia, including an autographed, postmarked envelope commemorating his famed October 4, 1963, speech to the United Nations, the words of which were set to music by Marley in “War.” Other prized possessions include a poster for Marley’s July 21, 1978, concert at Berkeley’s Greek Theater autographed by Marley and the Wailers. When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame borrowed it for an exhibition, it insured the piece for $75,000, making it perhaps the most valuable single piece in the collection. There is also a T-shirt from Marley’s famed 1978 “One Love” concert in Jamaica, where he famously joined the hands of the island’s two rival politicians, Michael Manley and Edward Seaga.
Steffens also boasts a treasure trove of original Marley singles on the Tuff Gong label, including several white label discs only pressed for sound systems and not intended for the public. One is a copy of “Knotty (not Natty) Dread,” credited to Bob Marley, Wailers & I Three, and another is a hand-written label, “Red Red Red,” penned by Marley himself, eventually released as “Redder Than Red.” There’s also a photograph of Marley at the moment his shoe was pierced and his toe spiked by a French music journalist during a friendly football match in 1977, leading to the discovery of the cancer that eventually killed him.
Both Stephen Davis and Timothy White, who wrote Bob Marley biographies, used Steffens’ Reggae Archives to research their books, as did the producers and directors of the Marley documentary and the recent “One Love” biopic, along with around 80 other authors over the years.
Determined to find a permanent home for the collection, he received his first offer — for the low six figures — in 1987 from the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Institute for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Since then, he has entertained a number of bids but went with Bogdanovich because of their relationship and his plans to house the collection in Jamaica.
