Song of the Day 2/27: Johnny Nash, “I Can See Clearly Now”

Dedicated to El Somnambulo, for reasons he’ll understand.

Johnny Nash started singing as a teenager in Houston and released his debut single in 1956. In the first 16 years of his career he had exactly two Top 40 hits, and one of them just squeaked in at No. 39. He was way ahead of the curve in recognizing the potential of the various strains of music in Jamaica, where he had moved in 1965 because it was so cheap to record there.

He met Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh in 1967 and signed them all to a publishing contract, hoping to break the rock steady sound in the U.S. The next year he released the single “Hold Me Tight,” which made it to No. 5; his other hit, “Cupid,” was the B-side, but nothing else made the charts.

With that background, the success of “I Can See Clearly Now” had to be a major surprise. He recorded it in London with backing by the Fabulous Five, a Jamaican band who went on to a long career backing dozens of different singers as well as releasing more than 20 albums on their own. It spent four weeks atop the Billboard 100 in November 1972.

That wasn’t the only time it made the charts. When Jimmy Cliff covered it for the 1993 movie “Cool Runnings,” a comedy based on the Jamaican bobsled team, it made it to No. 18.