Danny Sims

In 1962 when an 18 year-old singer named Robert Marley was cutting his first record at the Federal Studios in Kingston, Danny Sims, a young African-American, was operating a supper club named Sapphire's on Broadway in New York City.

Within one year, Sims had entered the music business as manager for Johnny Nash, an upcoming Rhythm-and-Blues singer from Texas. In 1963, the year that Marley helped start The Wailers, Sims visited the country for the first time as promoter of a concert tour; in four years, he would be working with the group of hopefuls from Trench Town.

From 1967 to 1972, Sims and Nash through their JAD Records company, produced over 80 songs by The Wailers. Almost 40 years later, Sims is reaping the rewards from those sessions, which took place in Kingston.

Bob Marley

Many of the songs from the JAD sessions can be found on the compilation series, The Complete Bob Marley and The Wailers: 1967-1972, which was released by JAD in 1998 and 1999. In March, the giant Universal Music International company will release Grooving Kingston 12, a three-CD set that also showcases several of the songs The Wailers did for Sims, Nash and Arthur Jenkins, another of the original partners in JAD.
Even Sims, now in his late 60s, admits that he is surprised at the acclaim his productions with The Wailers have received.
"I never thought these tracks would turn out so valuable," he told Marley archivist Roger Steffens five years ago.

Sims is possibly the first African-American to establish ties with Jamaican popular music. Before Chris Blackwell and Island Records came into the picture, Sims introduced The Wailers to the professional side of the music business, paying them a regular salary and signing the gifted Marley to his Cayman Publishing company.
Disc Jockey Neville Willoughby, who introduced Sims to Marley, says Sims' contribution to Jamaican music is pivotal.

SOUL REBELS: Bob Marley (left), Peter Tosh (middle) and Bunny Livingston. (Photos courtesy of Universal Music International)

"He was the first person with international connections to link with Bob (Marley). When they met the door opened for him and our music," said Willoughby.
Sims says he was born in Chicago. His parents, typical of many African-Americans in the racially divided South, moved to that city from segregated Mississippi in the 1930s.

As his reputation in the music business grew, he became a show promoter and brought acts like Paul Anka, Sammy Davis Jnr and Brook Benton to Jamaica.
Interestingly, he says it was while he and Nash were enjoying their greatest success in the United States that they were forced to leave that country for Jamaica.

Nash recorded the song, Let's Move and Groove, for their JODA record label in 1965 at the time of the race riots in Los Angeles. The record gained power-play by an LA disc jockey named The Magnificent Montague who called out, "Burn baby burn", each time he played the song, causing authorities to finger Let's Move and Groove as a spark for the unrest.
"The Feds thought that our record was creating the riots, I thought I was dead. So many of our people were being killed then," Sims told Steffens. "So I decided to get the hell out and we left for the Caribbean."

With the assistance of Ken Khouri, distributor of JODA's records in Jamaica, Sims and Nash bought a house in Russell Heights. In addition to recording Nash's rocksteady-based Hold Me Tight album, Sims also worked with Byron Lee and The Dragonaires at the Khouri-owned Federal. On January 8, 1966, Sims met the man who would be one of the 20th century's most influential figures.
"Neville Willoughby, whose father was my lawyer in Jamaica, introduced me to Bob Marley and The Wailers. Johnny Nash had met him the night before at a groundation with Mortimo Planno," Sims told the Observer in January. "The next day he came to our house with his wife Rita, Bunny (Livingston) and Peter (Tosh); he sang songs for me and immediately I thought he was a fantastic potential artiste."

Sims was so impressed by The Wailers that he signed them to a non-exclusive contract (they could work with other producers) and paid them a salary of $100 per week. According to Sims, when they started recording Marley was not keen to work at Babylon studios like Dynamics and Federal; as a result some of the first JAD songs were cut at Sims' house.
In 1968, Sims, Nash and Jenkins stepped up their work with The Wailers and began production at Federal, Dynamics and the Randy's studio which was owned by Vincent "Randy" Chin.
African trumpeter Hugh Masekela.

"We wanted to create a more R&B-oriented sound. We thought the Americans once they learned to play rocksteady, could do it as good as the Jamaicans," Steffens quoted Sims as saying.
The Wailers/JAD sessions produced no substantial hits for the group. But Nash benefited from covering Stir It Up and Guava Jelly, two Marley compositions, that did well in the US and Europe.

Things seemed to be on the up for Marley when he travelled to Sweden with Nash in 1971, to work on a movie soundtrack. While there, Marley was signed by CBS Records, the company to which Nash was signed; that partnership yielded one song, Reggae On Broadway.

As legend has it, The Wailers were in London to promote Reggae On Broadway when Marley, disillusioned with the slow progress of his deal with JAD, approached Blackwell to produce and market the group, which by now was a full-fledged Reggae band.

Island at the time was forging a formidable reputation as an independent company, having worked with rock acts like the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic. Blackwell immediately signed The
Wailers and is largely credited with their international breakthrough in the mid 1970s.

Sims denies that Marley went to Island because of a dispute with JAD. "There was no falling-out, I was his publisher at the time,
so when Island came along we made a deal with Chris Blackwell and put him with that company," he told the Observer.

As Marley's fame gathered momentum throughout the 1970s, Nash gradually left the music industry. Sims stayed in the business and with Marley's close friend, football player Allan "Skill" Cole; he co-managed the artiste's last tour in 1980.
He was Marley's manager at the time of his death in May 1981.

Formerly married to Supermodel, Beverley Johnson, Sims lived in Europe and Southern Africa before resettling in the US in 1995, the year he re-activated JAD.
He considers his work with The Wailers as the most important phase of his career.
"The most ambitious part was the beginning... still is today. Their development then is more important now than it ever was," he said.

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