John Lester Nash Jr. (August 19, 1940October 6, 2020)
was an American singer-songwriter, best known in the United States for his 1972 hit "
I Can See Clearly Now".
Primarily a
reggae and pop singer, he was one of the first non-Jamaican artists to record reggae music in
Kingston.
Early life
Nash was born on 19 August 1940 in
Houston, Texas, the son of Eliza (Armstrong) and John Lester Nash. He sang in the choir at Progressive New Hope Baptist Church in South Central Houston as a child.
Beginning in 1953, Nash sang covers of R&B hits on ''Matinee'', a local variety show on
KPRC-TV
KPRC-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Houston, Texas, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Graham Media Group. Its studios are located on Southwest Freeway (I-69/US 59) in the Southwest Management District (formerly Greater ...
;
from 1956 he sang on
Arthur Godfrey
Arthur Morton Godfrey (August 31, 1903 – March 16, 1983) was an American radio and television broadcaster and entertainer who was sometimes introduced by his nickname The Old Redhead. At the peak of his success, in the early-to-mid 1950s, Godf ...
's radio and television programs for a seven-year period.
Nash was married three times, and had two children.
Career
Signing with
ABC-Paramount
ABC Records was an American record label founded in New York City in 1955. It originated as the main popular music label operated by the Am-Par Record Corporation. Am-Par also created the Impulse! jazz label in 1960. It acquired many labels befo ...
, Nash made his major label debut in 1957 with the single "A Teenager Sings the Blues". He had his first chart hit in early 1958 with a cover of
Doris Day's "
A Very Special Love
''A Very Special Love'' is a 2008 Filipino comedy romance film produced by Star Cinema and Viva Films and starring John Lloyd Cruz and Sarah Geronimo. The film was directed by Cathy Garcia Molina and had received an “A” rating from the Ci ...
".
Marketed as a rival to
Johnny Mathis, Nash also enjoyed success as an actor early in his career, appearing in the screen version of playwright
Louis S. Peterson's ''
Take a Giant Step'' in 1959.
Nash won a Silver Sail Award for his performance from the
Locarno International Film Festival
The Locarno Film Festival is an annual film festival, held every August in Locarno, Switzerland. Founded in 1946, the festival screens films in various competitive and non-competitive sections, including feature-length narrative, documentary, s ...
. Nash continued releasing singles on a variety of labels such as Groove,
Chess,
Argo, and
Warner Bros.
Nash sang the theme song to the syndicated animated cartoon series ''
The Mighty Hercules'', which ran on various television stations from 1963 to 1966.
In 1964, Nash and manager Danny Sims formed JoDa Records in New York.
JoDa released
The Cowsills' single "All I Really Want to Be Is Me". Although JoDa filed for bankruptcy after only two years, Nash and Sims moved on to marketing American singers to
Jamaica, owing to the low cost of recording in that country.
In 1965, Nash had a top five hit in the
US ''
Billboard''
R&B chart, the ballad "Let's Move and Groove Together".
That year, he and Sims moved to Jamaica.
Their lawyer Newton Willoughby was the father of Jamaican radio host Neville Willoughby. After selling off his old entertainment assets in New York, Sims opened a new music publishing business in Jamaica, Cayman Music.
Nash planned to try breaking the local
rocksteady sound in the United States.
Around 1966 or 1967, Neville Willoughby took Nash to a
Rastafarian party where
Bob Marley & The Wailing Wailers were performing.
Members
Bob Marley,
Bunny Wailer,
Peter Tosh, and
Rita Marley introduced Nash to the local music scene.
Nash signed all four to an exclusive publishing contract with Cayman Music for
J$50 a week.
In 1967, Nash, Arthur Jenkins, and Sims collaborated to create a new label,
JAD Records (after their first names Johnny, Arthur, and Danny), and recorded their albums at
Federal Records in
Kingston.
JAD released Nash's
rocksteady single "
Hold Me Tight" in 1968; it became a top-five hit in both the U.S. and UK.
In 1971, Nash scored another UK hit with his cover of Marley's "
Stir It Up".
Nash's 1972 reggae-influenced single "
I Can See Clearly Now" sold over one million copies, and was awarded a
gold disc by the
R.I.A.A. in November 1972.
"I Can See Clearly Now" reached No. 1 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 on November 4, 1972, and remained atop the chart for four weeks, spending the same four weeks atop the adult contemporary chart. The ''I Can See Clearly Now'' album includes four original Marley compositions published by JAD: "Guava Jelly", "Comma Comma", "You Poured Sugar on Me", and the follow-up hit "Stir It Up". "There Are More Questions Than Answers" was a third hit single taken from the album.
Nash was also a composer for the Swedish romance film ''
Want So Much to Believe'' (1971),
in which he portrayed 'Robert'.
The movie soundtrack, partly instrumental reggae with strings, was co-composed by
Bob Marley and arranged by Fred Jordan.
[
JAD Records ceased to exist in 1971,] but it was revived in 1997 by American Marley specialist Roger Steffens and French musician and producer Bruno Blum for the ''Complete Bob Marley & the Wailers 1967–1972'' ten-album series, for which several of the Nash-produced Marley and Tosh tracks were mixed or remixed by Blum for release. In the UK, his biggest hit was with the song "Tears on My Pillow
"Tears on My Pillow" is a doo-wop song written by Sylvester Bradford and Al Lewis in 1958. The composition was first recorded by Little Anthony and the Imperials on End Records and was that group's debut recording under that name. Their origin ...
" which reached number one in the UK Singles Chart in July 1975 for one week.
After a cover of Sam Cooke's " Wonderful World" in 1976 and "Let's Go Dancing" in 1979, for many years Nash seemed to have dropped out of sight. He had a brief resurgence in the mid-1980s with the album ''Here Again'' (1986), which was preceded by the minor UK hit, "Rock Me Baby". Younger audiences were introduced to Nash's music with the appearance of Jimmy Cliff's cover of "I Can See Clearly Now" in Disney's 1993 hit film '' Cool Runnings'', and Nash's original version appeared over the opening scene of John Cusack's 1997 film, '' Grosse Point Blank''. In May 2006, Nash was singing again at SugarHill Recording Studios and at Tierra Studios in his native Houston. Working with SugarHill chief engineer Andy Bradley and Tierra Studios' Randy Miller, he began the work of transferring analog tapes of his songs from the 1970s and 1980s to Pro Tools digital format.
Acting career
Nash has four acting credits in film and television. In 1959, he had the lead role as Spencer Scott in '' Take a Giant Step'', directed by Philip Leacock, one of the first black family films written by a black writer. In 1960, he appeared as "Apple" alongside Dennis Hopper in the crime drama '' Key Witness''. In 1971, he played Robert in the Swedish romance '' Vill så gärna tro''.[
]
Death
Nash died peacefully of natural causes in his home, surrounded by close family in Houston on October 6, 2020, after a period of declining health. He was 80.
Selected discography
Albums
Source: AllMusic
Compilations
Source: AllMusic
Soundtrack
Nash sang the theme song for the television cartoon series '' The Mighty Hercules'', which aired in first-run syndication from 1963 to 1966.
Singles
Source: AllMusic
Notes
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Nash, Johnny
1940 births
2020 deaths
American male pop singers
20th-century African-American male singers
American tenors
Musicians from Houston
Writers from Houston
Singers from Texas
American expatriates in Jamaica
Groove Records artists
Epic Records artists
ABC Records artists
Argo Records artists
MAM Records artists
Traditional pop music singers
20th-century American singers
20th-century American male singers
21st-century American singers
21st-century American male singers
21st-century African-American male singers