Man, oh man. Two in one day. Johnny Nash and Bunny "Striker" Lee both died yesterday. If you're not into reggae, those two names might not mean anything. Nash was an American singer, best known for his biggest hit "I Can See Clearly Now". He moved to Jamaica in 1965 and started a record label, Jad records, with two partners. After Nash met Bob and Rita Marley in 1966 at a Rastafarian grounation and heard them sing, he and his partners signed them, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer. Jad would have the Wailers nucleus until 1972. The contract sold to Island Records. The rest is history.
Nash himself had a rocksteady song, "Hold Me Tight", reach #7 in the U.S., a total anomaly in 1968. The LP that contained it had two Bunny Wailer songs. Then, in 1972, he had a hit with "I Can See Clearly Now" a reggae-lite tune that went to #1. On the LP of the same name were three Marley compositions and one that Nash co-wrote with Marley. Nash was an early highly visible reggae booster, notably before Marley exploded.
Bunny "Striker" Lee was a producer. If Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reed were the top dogs (which they were) Lee was right there behind them, coming in a little later but staying a little longer. The tracks he produced with his studio band, the Aggrovators, supplied King Tubby with all the raw dub meat he needed. Shit, just the list of deejays he worked with is a Who's Who: Dennis Alcapone, U-Roy, I-Roy, Prince Jazzbo, U Brown, Dr Alimantado, Jah Stitch, Trinity, and Tapper Zukie. Beat that Coxsonne.
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Fu-huck, I was in a good mood earlier. And it's still lingering. That doesn't happen often enough. A combination of perfect weather (low 80's), warm ocean, and a chat binge with locals I see nearly every day on my way down the walkway, past the wall, and away from the beach. I was walking up the alley behind the pier when I thought about what song, of all the music I have at my disposal, would really be perfect to hear at that particular moment. Out of nowhere, Johnny Nash's "Hold Me Tight". Yeeaaahhh, I love that song.
Johnny Nash commands respect in this house. He was the first artist to make a determined effort to break rocksteady and reggae in the U.S. Okay, so Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" was a couple years earlier, but that was a blip in the states, a freak occurrence. Nash tried repeatedly. He first went to Jamaica in 1968, with his Jamaican girlfriend. The woman's father, a local celebrity, introduced Nash to the Wailers, who were then unknown outside of Jamaica. The Wailers turned him on to the local music scene, and Nash dug it enough to sign the Wailers to his label, Jad Records, as both writers and performers.
His first post-Jamaica LP, Hold Me Tight, featured two Peter Tosh penned songs, "You've Gotta Change Your Ways, and "Love" a non-reggae ballad. But the big hit on the LP was "Hold Me Tight", written by Nash. Man, there's something about it's humble simplicity that just soothes. Depending on your mood, the LP itself could be heard as ho-hum watered down reggae with a little light soul, or one of those freak LPs where comparisons to other music is rendered irrelevant by the vibe. It's not challenging, it's not radical, it's just a simple vibe, It's barbeque music, sunburn nursing music. You know, a tall cool one, a slow dance with a foxy chick, that sort of stuff.
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Here's an oddball, and a few others. Because I never heard of a half German version of Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop", it's reasonable to presume that some of you haven't either. So it's down there, along with the original. It led to the connecting of a few dots, which in turn is why there is this post. If you're not familiar with the significance of "My Boy Lollipop", recorded by Small when she was 15, the original all-English version was the first reggae related song to be played on AM radio in the U.S., reaching #2 on the charts in 1964. (It's actually bluebeat, but you catch the drift.) It's also the first single that made a ton of loot for Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, who would use the dough for the big Bob Marley push in 1973. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Fuck, I love the moves in this one. Really. The coolest thing I've seen in a while.
To give you an idea how barren the U.S. charts were (and still are) in regards to reggae, the next time reggae would appear would be 1968, when Johnny Nash's "Hold Me Tight" charted. Nash's reached #5, prompting a cover, with rewritten lyrics, used in a commercial for Score after shave (believe me when I say that the commercial was inescapable). The song was released on Nash's JAD Records, the same year that Nash had turned his ear toward Jamaican music, leading to his signing of Bob Marley and the Wailers. Nash had hoped to break rocksteady in the U.S. but wouldn't quite get there (which is why the Wailers were available when Blackwell came calling). Another four years would pass before reggae appeared on the U.S. charts again, with Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now", and Paul Simon's "Mother and Child Reunion". Nash's album, also titled "I Can See Clearly Now", contained four Marley penned songs, including "Stir It Up". Simon's song, "Mother and Child Reunion", was recorded with Jimmy Cliff's backing band, the guitarist and bass player of which also backed Toots and the Maytals. (Marley must have been busy that day.)
Bob Marley and the Wailers - Stir It Up
Two years later, in 1974, Eric Clapton covered Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff", and it went to #1. (Marley's original was released in '73, on his second album album under his contract with Island/Blackwell.) That was about the time that the AM Boss Radio began fading, giving way to the looser formatted FM radio, which was where Bob Marley would make his name in the U.S., though with limited airplay (back then). So there you have it. The complete history of U.S. AM radio reggae hits, in four artists, five songs, and ten years..
If I was 15 years old in 1964, I would have been obsessed.
As I mentioned above, Millie Small's "My Boy Lollipop" was the first song that made any real money for Blackwell. He had put out 26 singles up to that point, none of them sticking to the wall. Small's song was a huge international hit, and came at a time when the label was struggling; it kept the label alive. When it came time to sign Marley, it was done with a hand shake deal, and Blackwell paid for the first recording sessions. The hand shake deal was enabled by Blackwell's trust in rastas, the result of a beach rescue at their hands, when he was 19 (in 1958). So, in a stretch, it's conceivable that if it weren't for a 15 year old girl, and some kind rastas, Marley never would have made it big. Like I said, it's a stretch, but I'm big on "what if" scenarios.
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