Junior Braithwaite, the humble co-founder of the Wailers, was murdered last 
night, June 2,  in Kingston by three unknown gunmen. 
 
Braithwaite was featured on "Simmer Down," the Wailers' first record in 
December of 1963, and sang lead with the group for the next eight months on 
such songs as "Habits," "Straight and Narrow Way," and on his swan song with 
them, "It Hurts To Be Alone," a haunting ballad that became one of the 
quartet's biggest hits. According to their initial producer, Studio One's 
Coxson Dodd, "Braithwaite had the best voice in the group when they first 
came to me."

Braithwaite left the group in September of 1964 to move to America with hopes 
of pursuing a medical career, plans which never materialized. He lived 
primarily in Chicago and southern Wisconsin for the next 20 years, but 
returned to Jamaica in 1984 at the request of former partner Bunny Wailer, 
who enlisted him in his "Never Ending Wailers" recording project. The new 
album combined tapes of Marley's voice in the '60s with new harmony tracks 
laid by Bunny, Junior and two other "original Wailers" Peter Tosh and 
Constantine "Vision" Walker. The album was finally released in 1991.

Plans for world tours with a reunited-Wailers lineup never materialized, and 
were made moot with the assassination of Peter Tosh in September of 1987. 
Bunny Wailer thus becomes, truly, the last surviving Original Wailer, with 
Walker having joined the group late, in 1966.