Johnny Nash launched his professional path in R&B, yet he emerged as a key catalyst for reggae’s broad commercial breakthrough thanks to the worldwide impact of his 1972 number-one single “I Can See Clearly Now.” By the time that track appeared, the Houston native was already a veteran vocalist who had logged several modest successes in pop and R&B before a late-1960s visit to Jamaica redirected his artistic course. Among the earliest American artists to record in Kingston, Nash enjoyed his strongest sales during the first half of the 1970s and maintained a loyal following in England throughout the decade, after which he largely withdrew from the studio while continuing occasional live dates until his death in 2020.
Born in Houston, Texas, on August 19, 1940, Nash refined his voice in the choir of his local Baptist church and, at age thirteen, became a regular performer on the television program Matinee, delivering covers of then-current R&B hits. Arthur Godfrey discovered him in 1956, resulting in seven years of appearances on Godfrey’s radio and television broadcasts. Nash signed with ABC-Paramount for his first single, “A Teenager Sings the Blues,” issued in 1957, and scored his initial chart entry early the next year with a version of Doris Day’s “A Very Special Love.” Late in 1958 he joined Paul Anka and George Hamilton IV on the inspirational “The Teen Commandments.” Marketed as a rival to Johnny Mathis, he launched an acting career with a role in the 1959 film Take a Giant Step and followed it with an appearance in 1960’s Key Witness, yet subsequent singles on Warner Bros., Groove, and Argo drew little attention and his momentum stalled.
Nash reentered the spotlight in 1965 when the ballad “Let’s Move and Groove Together” reached the R&B Top Five; more notably, the record became a sizable hit in Jamaica, where he traveled in 1967 for promotional engagements. During a later trip he recorded the ska-tinged “Hold Me Tight” at Byron Lee’s Federal Studios; released on his own JAD label, the single climbed to the pop Top Five on both sides of the Atlantic, and the same imprint scored a Top 40 hit in early 1970 with a reggae reading of Sam Cooke’s “Cupid.” The following year Nash scored a major British success with his interpretation of Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up.” While living in Britain he signed with Epic, which in 1972 issued his biggest hit, “I Can See Clearly Now,” a track that remained at number one on the U.S. pop chart for four weeks. Although his American profile faded once more, he returned to the U.K. top spot in 1975 with “Tears on My Pillow” and followed it a year later with another Sam Cooke cover, “(What A) Wonderful World.”
He gradually stepped back from performing, though he released the album Here Again in 1986 and made scattered live appearances. In the early 2000s Nash began converting analog tapes of his 1970s and 1980s recordings to digital format at Tierra Studios in Houston. Intensely private, he remained largely out of public view apart from occasional tours as the century advanced. Johnny Nash died at his home in Houston on October 6, 2020; he was eighty years old.
