Houston native ‘Clearly’ a superstar
Johnny Nash possessed a honeyed voice that was swoon-inducing in its lower register, and he could eke from it a crystallized aching when he needed a touch of melancholy. He had a pop idol’s looks and an ear for great international music that suggested places near and far.
Nash got his start as a teen idol in Houston and became an international superstar who played a formidable part in introducing the biggest reggae performer to the world outside of Jamaica. Nash’s career was a strange one with great global success and a retreat into a quiet life back in his hometown.
Nash — the private man and the public star— died of natural causes Tuesday at home in Houston, according to his son, John. He was 80
child of Third Ward, a graduate of Yates High School, a man who believed in his city and his state somuch that he created a rodeo for Black cowboys in Houston, Nash screamed an affinity for his hometown even though he did so in whispered tones. After enjoying pop stardom, he spent years reflecting good things onto his city while deflecting attention from himself.
Legacy is a tricky thing because our culture’s filing mechanisms are flawed. When yesterday’s hit makers disappear, they’re often forgotten or relegated to a “Where are they now?” status. Nash was, strictly by the numbers, a man with six Top 40hits to his name, so not a one-hit-wonder by any measure.
But he was also an artist with one song that proved popular to the point of deep cultural renown. “I Can See Clearly Now” is the sort of song artists more famous and more lauded wish they could have
written and recorded. It’s the kind of song in which even the artist disappears into its ubiquity, leaving the song as a pure artifact. It’s a song people know, even when they don’t know the singer or the story behind it. Nash left behind albums of wonderful music and a formidable legacy. But even to those who don’t know his name, he left behind one song that transcends time and place. The legendary rock critic Robert Christgau called it “the kind of song that can get you through a traffic jam.”
“I Can See Clearly Now” is an anthem for troubled times, whether those times are 1972, when the song was released, or 2020, when it feels agelessly urgent.
The hit
Best to get to the song first, because it looms so large. Liam Omaonlai, singer in the Irish band Hothouse Flowers, said the song’s tone “has the blues of generations of resistance and survival in it.”
He’s not wrong: For all the positivity that courses through “I Can See Clearly Now,” it isn’t a foolish attempt to squinch closed one’s eyes and wish away the bad. Rather, Nash’s eyes were clear and open when he wrote a song of endurance that noted “all obstacles in my way.” It’s a song about clarity when times are foggy.
Ray Charles and Willie Nelson covered it. Admittedly, those two covered many songs in their distinguished careers, songs considered part of the Great American Songbook, classics from the first 50 years of American vocal music. Reggae stars like Jimmy Cliff and Toots Hibbert sang it, too. So did more pop-minded acts like Donnie Osmond and Sonny & Cher. It has appeared in films and TV shows and commercials so many times that it’s branded in the larger cultural consciousness.
“I Can See Clearly Now” is a song of perfect construction, its little parts all setting a tone that pushes the positivity and underscores the challenges threaded throughout it. It reached No. 1 in 1972, but it took a slow path to the top of the charts that reflected Nash’s slow path to stardom.
The beginning
We’ll get to Bob Marley in a moment.
John Lester Nash Jr. was born in Houston on Aug. 19, 1940. He sang at the Progressive New Hope Baptist Church on Elgin as a kid and was just 13 when he first appeared as a singer on KPRC-TV’s “Matinee.” By age17, he had a Top 40 hit with “A Very Special Love,” which reached No. 23 in 1958.
Nash had a face for film, and he appeared in a 1959 feature, “Take a Giant Step.” But movies didn’t make sufficient use of his voice. In the early ’60s, he struck up a friendship with an entertainment industry type named Danny Sims, who co-founded a record label called JAD Records.
Sims was intrigued, though, by the music emanating from Jamaica, where American soul and R&B and doo wop melded with Caribbean forms into rocksteady and later reggae. Nash said he first heard Marley sing in 1966. His career path would change almost immediately.
Nash and Sims signed Marley — but as a songwriter, not a singer. Sims in 2012 told me that Nash “taught Bob how to sing on the mic, and they taught Johnny how to play the reggae rhythm.”
Marley’s influence can be felt on “Hold Me Tight,” which Nash recorded in Jamaica in 1968. Marley associate and future reggae star Peter Tosh wrote two songs for Nash, and in 1968, a decade after his teen idol success, Nash hit the charts again with that song.
Nash and Marley continued working together into the early 1970s. Several songs on Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” album were written or co-written by Marley, including “Stir It Up,” a No. 12 hit for Nash in 1973 before Marley became a household name in the States.
Before helping Marley break in, Nash took “I Can See Clearly Now” to No. 1. The song reflects the tumult of its era perfectly, a weary post-storm vibe that nevertheless feels hopeful. The song found Nash backed by the Average White Band, a Scotland-based soul-pop group that included keyboardist John “Rabbit” Bundrick, another Houston native.
Alan Gorrie, the Average White Band bassist, called it “a standout piece” when he talked to the Chronicle in 2012. “He’s saying if you can identify your hurdles, you can surmount them. It’s a fine juxtaposed device to reinforce the message of positivity.”
“You could tell immediately it was a hit,” Sims said in 2012. “Everybody who heard it went away talking about it and Johnny’s vocal performance.”
Sims was on point: Nash’s vocal is so achingly pliant. It’s soulful and sweet, wounded and resilient. The arrangement is international but also universally pop-minded.
Merry-go-round
Nash released another album after “I Can See Clearly Now,” “My Merry-Go Round” which had a hit and more Caribbean crossover in its sound. But the flow of music slowed, and he released only one album in the ’80s.
“Maybe he walked away at a bad time, but there was a reason for it,” Sims said.
An understated star, Nash settled back in Houston. For more than 15 years, I reached out asking him to tell the story of his early success, his whiplash-inducing ’70s success and his retreat from performing. He politely declined. After I wrote about “I Can See Clearly Now” in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey three years ago, I received a voicemail from Nash — just thanking me for thinking of him.
In 1993, he opened the Johnny Nash Indoor Arena, where he’d hold rodeos for the Black community in Houston. Years ago, I spoke to singer-songwriter Ryan Bingham, who used to rodeo. Bingham described visiting Nash’s arena as “walking into aworld thatwas different and also familiar. I always had a great time there.”
But the arena eventually closed. And Nash, the musician, continued to remain quiet.
Those inclined to dig for his ’50s recordings will find polite music sung beautifully. Track down his work from1968 through the ’70s, and you’ll find an artist who didn’t see boundaries in music — who liked what he liked and advocated for music from other countries.
And there’s always that hit, which Jimmy Cliff recorded in 1993 and turned into a pop hit in the U.S. again — two decades after it was first recorded.
But we’re more than a quartercentury past that. Music trends come and go. Some songs float above trends.
“Johnny Nash was a trailblazer,” said Kam Franklin, frontwoman for the Suffers, Houston’s Gulf Cost soul band. “And I feel as though he had this impact that was felt by many who don’t even realize he had that impact. That’s a pretty important thing to have done.”