Johnny Nash, the singer, songwriter, and producer of the enduring 1972 strike song “I Can See Plainly Now,” died Tuesday. He was 80 and died from all-natural leads to at home in Houston, his son, Johnny Nash Jr., told The Affiliated Press.
By the time Nash recorded his signature music, reportedly prepared as he was recovering from cataract operation, he experienced currently “lived numerous present business enterprise life,” AP reports, which include teenage crooner, R&B singer, motion picture actor, report govt, and early booster of reggae and its primary light-weight, Bob Marley. Nash met Marley and fellow Wailers Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston on a vacation to Jamaica in 1968, served signal the group to his JAD Records label, and brought Marley on tour to London in the early 1970s. His cover of Marley’s “Stir It Up” helped carry reggae to an American audience, and the two collaborated on a tune, “You Poured Sugar On Me.”
Nash’s past album, Listed here Once more, arrived out in 1986. Often private, he withdrew entirely from the tunes organization by the 1990s, moved to a ranch in Houston with his loved ones, and managed rodeo reveals.
John Lester Nash Jr. was born in Houston in 1940, sang in church, and had is own clearly show on Houston television at age 13, attaining a national audience just after a several years with appearances on “The Arthur Godfrey Present.” He was married three moments, and he is survived by his spouse, Carli Nash, and two young children, Johnny Nash Jr. and daughter Monica.
In the late 1990s, Nash advised The Gleaner in Jamaica that he experienced “realized gratification in phrases of the individuals I’ve experienced the opportunity to meet up with,” and “a life span physique of get the job done I can be happy of is far more important to me” than a Grammy or other “matters of that character.”
“I Can See Clearly Now” marketed far more than a million copies, spent four months at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in 1972, and has been protected by a broad array of musical legends. You can check out Nash execute the track, dubbed “2 minutes and 48 seconds of undiluted inspiration” by Robert Christgau, below, from 1973. Peter Weber
