Where Is The Love For Johnny Nash?

i was listening to his first album tonight. on abc/paramount. straight up smooth crooner stuff. don costa arrangements. i love it. so pretty. but i like the early 60's soul stuff too. and then what the hell - blammo! - he's hitting the top ten in the late 60's with a rock steady number! love that stuff too. the reggae stuff. signs bob marley to his first american contract in the late 60's too! i need that hold me tight album. i always forget to look for it. the 70's roll around and -blammo! - he comes up with the monster hit of all monster hits in i can see clearly now. then he makes some more 70's stuff and then he pretty much completely disappears! he's still alive, you know. i think he's due for a comeback. he can't be that old. 60's? what a voice. i need to check out some of those 70's records i've never heard. and i never did buy those folk soul/soul folk records that i always saw in the dollar bins for years.

anyone?

i totally did not get the apostrophe memo.

how did i never notice the buzzy synth all over "i can see clearly now"? it is a+++

There is a great mid-70s clip of him on the Mike Douglas show talking about the great rocksteady/early reggae scene coming out of Jamaica, super enthused...

but sadly it's disappeared from the internet! I think Scott Seward would enjoy it.

I just listened to some Johnny Nash for old times sake. He brought reggae music into a lot of squaresville homes. For that I am grateful. Totally enjoyable stuff, I like it.

I have two of his early ABC records, really nice late night playing.

"1961 or 1962, driving back with high-school friends from New Year’s Eve in San Francisco very late at night, on Skyline Boulevard up above the San Francisco Peninsula, foggy and pitch dark, and this song comes on the radio. I hear it once, and it’s instantly and irrevocably committed to memory. I know the tune, the feeling, the tremendous build to the chorus, and all the words. I have no idea what it is. I never hear it again, but I think of it all the time, and in 1968, putting together my first book, I wrote about it that night. A year or so later, the record arrives in the mail, thanks to someone who had read the book: Johnny Nash, 'Some of Your Lovin’,' on ABC-Paramount...

"It’s as good as I remembered it. It’s as good as any record has to be. But there’s a way in which I wish I still knew nothing, that it would still be out there, floating in the ether, and I’d never be absolutely sure I heard it at all..." (Greil Marcus)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFYw946ckDE

R.I.P., Johnny

https://preview.houstonchronicle.com/music/houston-s-johnny-nash-who-recorded-i-can-see-15626533

Didn't know that he was backed by the Average White Band and Rabbit Bundrick on "I Can See Clearly Now"!

Wow, neither did I, thanks!

I believe I may owe you lunch at the Proud Bird for that bit of enlightenment.

RIP :(