John Lester Nash Jr. (August 19, 1940October 6, 2020) was an American singer and songwriter, best known in the United States for his 1972 hit " I Can See Clearly Now". Primarily a

reggae Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica during the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its Jamaican diaspora, diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay", was the first ...

and pop singer, he was one of the first non-Jamaican artists to record reggae music in Kingston.

Early life

Nash was born on August 19, 1940, in

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

, 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; from 1956 he sang on Arthur Godfrey's radio and television programs for a seven-year period.

Career

1950s

Signing with ABC-Paramount, 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 Doris Day (born Doris Mary Kappelhoff; April 3, 1922 – May 13, 2019) was an American actress and singer. She began her career as a big band singer in 1937, achieving commercial success in 1945 with two No. 1 recordings, "Sentimental Journey ...

's "A Very Special Love". 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. Nash continued releasing singles on a variety of labels such as Groove,

Chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

, Argo, and Warner Bros. The song "The Teen Commandments" by Paul Anka,

George Hamilton IV George Hege Hamilton IV (July 19, 1937 – September 17, 2014) was an American country musician. He began performing in the late 1950s as a teen idol, switching to country music in the early 1960s. Biography Hamilton was born in Winston-Salem, ...

, and Johnny Nash reached #14 on Canada's CHUM Charts, December 15, 1958.

1960s

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 Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

, 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 A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphics, graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can repres ...

, the ballad "Let's Move and Groove Together". It was just outside the Top 40 in Canada at #44. 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 Robert Nesta Marley (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, he fused elements of reggae, ska and rocksteady and was renowned for his distinctive voca ...

, 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, and number 1 in Canada. The record sold well in Argentina. According to the January 25 issue of ''Cash Box'', both Nash's version and a version by Anthony Swete were selling strongly. It was charting alongside a version by Anthony Swete in the Argentina's Best Sellers chart.

1970s

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

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" which reached number one in the UK Singles Chart in July 1975 for one week. The album Tears on My Pillow came out later in the year. 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.

Later career

Nash had a brief resurgence in the mid-1980s with the album ''Here Again'' (1986), which included the minor UK hit, "Rock Me Baby". Younger audiences were introduced to Nash's music with the appearance of

Jimmy Cliff James Chambers, Jamaican Order of Merit, OM (born 30 July 1944), known professionally as Jimmy Cliff, is a Jamaican ska, rocksteady, reggae and soul musician, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and actor. He is the only living reggae musician to hol ...

's cover of "I Can See Clearly Now" in Disney's 1993 film '' Cool Runnings''. Nash's version of the song appeared over the opening scene of John Cusack's 1997 film, '' Grosse Point Blank''. In May 2006, Nash worked with SugarHill Recording Studios chief engineer Andy Bradley and Tierra Studios' Randy Miller to transfer analog tapes of his songs from the 1970s and 1980s to Pro Tools digital format.

Acting

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''.

Personal life

Nash was married three times and had 3 children,one child was left behind in kingston ,Jamaica, now located in Montreal, Canada Nash died 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

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nash, Johnny 1940 births 2020 deaths American male pop singers 20th-century African-American male singers American tenors Singers 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 American reggae musicians