Before Bob Marley ever broke through on the American pop charts, a smooth-voiced crooner from Houston was already sitting at number one with a reggae song. On August 19, 1972, Johnny Nash turned thirty-two, and his single 'I Can See Clearly Now' was in the middle of a four-week run atop the Billboard Hot 100. It was an unlikely collision: a former teen idol delivering a sun-drenched Kingston groove straight to Middle America. At that moment, Nash was the most commercially successful reggae artist on the planet — though history would soon hand that crown to his protégé.
From teen idol to JAD Records
Nash's path to that moment was anything but linear. He started out in the 1950s as a pop singer, cutting traditional ballads and soul compositions. By 1959, he was acting in films like 'Take a Giant Step'. The real pivot, however, came in 1965, when Nash and his manager Danny Sims founded JAD Records. The label had a specific mission: record and promote Jamaican artists. It was an unusual move for an American pop singer, but Nash had fallen hard for the island's music.
Homes in Jamaica became Nash's second base in the late 1960s. During one of those trips, in 1967, he met Bob Marley — long before the world knew the name. JAD Records soon signed Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer as The Wailers. Nash cut a version of Marley's 'Stir It Up' that reached the UK top twenty in 1972. That same year, he flew Marley to London for recording sessions, becoming the first artist to do so.
The Kingston sessions behind the hit
The album 'I Can See Clearly Now' was recorded mostly in Kingston, using the rhythm section from Dynamic Sounds studio. Members of The Wailers played on the sessions. Nash self-produced many of his reggae recordings, and the title track became his signature. It held the US number one spot for four weeks. The album itself climbed to number twenty-three on the Billboard 200. Suddenly, reggae had a mainstream American face — and it wasn't a Jamaican one.
Before that breakthrough, Nash had already tasted international success. His 1968 single 'Hold Me Tight' hit number five in the UK and number one in Canada. He even starred in a Swedish film, 'Vill så gärna tro', in 1971. But the reggae turn changed everything. His version of 'Stir It Up' introduced Marley's songwriting to a wider audience, and JAD Records released many early Wailers recordings. Nash was both a hitmaker and a bridge between two worlds.
Funding The Wailers' breakthrough
The financial lifeline Nash helped secure for The Wailers proved pivotal. He assisted the group in getting an advance from CBS Records, which funded their breakthrough album 'Catch a Fire'. Without that injection, the trajectory of roots reggae might have stalled. Nash and Marley also wrote several songs together that were never officially released. The collaboration ran deep, but the spotlight would soon shift away from the American.
In 1975, Nash left JAD Records and signed with Epic. The move coincided with a commercial decline. He continued recording and touring through the 1980s, but the chart magic faded. His 1972 single 'There Are More Questions Than Answers' had been another UK hit, yet the momentum didn't last. Marley's rise, meanwhile, redefined reggae's global image. Nash became a footnote in a story he had helped write.
The song itself refused to die. Jimmy Cliff covered 'I Can See Clearly Now' for the 1993 film 'Cool Runnings', and his version also charted high. Nash's original remained a radio staple, a four-week Billboard champion that predated Marley's only US top forty hit by years. Nash was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2007. He died of natural causes on October 6, 2020, at age eighty.
The 1972 single that made him famous still turns up in dollar bins, its Epic label worn from decades of play. The original JAD pressings of early Wailers material are far scarcer, often carrying the catalogue numbers from Nash's short-lived label. His own 'I Can See Clearly Now' LP, with its Kingston-recorded grooves, remains a cheap entry point into a moment when reggae first bent the American pop charts. It wasn't Marley who did that first. It was Johnny Nash.