The most memorable experience of my young journalistic career was being granted an interview with Bob Marley at Manhattan’s Essex House in October 1980. Marley was in town on an unlikely mission. He was opening for the Commodores featuring Lionel Richie for two nights at Madison Square Garden. The reggae singer-songwriter was already a global star, having brought the odd syncopation of Jamaican music and lyrics infused with imagery from the island’s Rastafarian religion to stadiums around the world. So why was Marley an opening act at an arena he could easily sell out on his own?
Marley was committed to reaching, and teaching, the African-American audience. As he told me that afternoon, “Rastarfari message to black America is to return to their roots, their beginnings in Africa. Some say ‘I no African. I not from there. I American. I New Yorker.’ But they cannot change their color. They must accept the truth. If not this generation their children will. Black people can make Africa the strongest nation on earth. It is the only place where they will be allowed to be themselves. The black man’s life here in the West is a farce. He is neither himself nor the white man.”
I went to one of the two MSG shows, a night I’ll never forget. Rapper Kurtis Blow was booked to open the show (and soften the blow of Marley being the announced opener.) I actually helped his DJ Davy D carry Blow’s records onto the MSG stage. Marley and the Wailers, who I’d seen in New York twice before, gave an intense set before a crowd that was largely composed of his fans, most of whom left the building during the Commodores’ set. Later in the year it was reported that it was during his stay at the Essex House the singer’s inflamed big toe led to a fatal cancer diagnosis.
It wasn’t until the second decade of the 21st century that I found out whole story of why Marley played those dates with the Commodores. The man behind it was a colorful character named Danny Sims. A caramel colored man with a big smile, a gift for gab and self-conscious sophistication, I came in contact with Sims and his then wife, the gorgeous model Beverly Johnson, at several functions in the late ‘70s when he was trying to sell Johnson as a singer. Though he was born in Mississippi, Sims grew up in Chicago and New York, and had the slick patter of a well-schooled hustler.
In the early ‘60s Sims started a publishing company after, as he told Roger Steffens, “a lawyer friend of mine took me to the Cayman Islands to set up my company and I named my company after the Cayman Islands. I started working with (the singer) Johnny Nash around 1962 and we formed a company JAD Records about 1965-66.” Another part of Sims’ entertainment business portfolio was Sapphire, said to be the first black owned supper club in midtown Manhattan.
How does a young black man raise the capital for all these ventures in the mid-60s? Sims had friends in low places. Marley archivist Steffens has written, "Danny's mob connections were no secret. He admitted to me that his partner in JAD Records for decades was Joe Armone, head of one of the biggest crime families in America. 'I'm a mobster,' he told me proudly, more than once.” Armone, who died in 1992, was rightfully notorious. He was linked by police to the heroin smuggling case that inspired 1972 film, ’The French Connection,’ and allegedly participated in the 1985 hit on his mob superior Paul Castellano.
"With the Jamaica boys who would come to America and get into trouble, I was always the guy they called," Sims told Chris Salewicz, discussing narcotics trafficking. “I was able to reach out with the guys I was friendly with, and keep the bad Americans away from them, to let them do their stuff without bothering them. You mentioned my name in New York in the white or black community, and people left you alone."
Sims and Johnny Nash left America for Jamaica in 1966, reputedly to escape the FBI. The story goes Nash released, “Let’s Move and Groove Together” in 1965 on a Canadian label and then got a U.S. release on the JoDa label. This gospel flavored soul ballad went to #1 on the R&B chart. According to Sims the label that released the record in the U.S. aired a radio spot promoting the record with the words “Burn, baby, burn” in it, an expression popularized on air by L.A. DJ the Magnificent Montague during the 1965 Watts Riot. According to Sims,”The FBI called me and said, 'Danny, we finally got you.' We thought we were going to get killed by the FBI for 'inciting a riot', as they called it. We got on a plane to Jamaica.” The problem with this story is that JoDa, the U.S. label that released the record, was actually a subsidiary of his publishing company JAD. So, it is unlikely Sims sabotaged his own hit with that radio spot.
Whatever the real reason when Sims relocated to Jamaica, he and Nash started making records and scouting for talent. Local sounds, ska and rock steady, along with American soul, ruled Jamaican music at this time and the first stirrings of reggae could be heard if you listened closely. As JAD began signing local musicians Nash’s music started being influenced by the island’s rhythms.
It was at a Rastafarian religious ceremony called a “grounation” that Nash first heard Bob Marley in January 1969. Surrounded by several dozen Rastas of all ages in a Kingston building Nash heard the “akee” drum sound favored by the religious devotees and the voices of three singers, Rita Anderson, Peter Tosh and Marley. "Johnny told me about this fantastic artist," remembered Sims. "He said the songs were great, and he had invited him up to see me at my house.” At that point in his life Marley was focused on being a soul singer in the style of the music coming from Miami radio. For the next few years Marley and his collaborators stayed at a home owned by Sims, signed with his Cayman Music, and received a weekly salary of $100 from JAD.
The deal was everything that recorded by Marley under this agreement was owned by Sims and Nash. Sims, who was all about selling pop music, told Marley he could record any Rastafarian themed songs to local labels, thinking they’d have no audience off the island. Marley and Tosh, Bunny Wailer and his soon to be wife by Rita Anderson, formed the Wailers, who many now think of as reggae’s Beatles.
While the Wailers refined their sound in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s Nash cut Americanized versions of Marley penned songs, including “Stir It Up,” “Guava Jelly” and “Reggae on Broadway.” During this period of Marley’s musical apprenticeship, much of the Wailers’ music was sweetened for the international market in New York or Toronto or by non-Jamaican players flown in by Sims. Master drummer Bernard Purdie came down to Kingston to play on sessions with Marley and company, providing musical precision while learning the island’s rhythms. (Purdie would explain in later interviews that his signature work on Aretha Franklin’s “Day Dreaming” and “Rock Steady” were reggae influenced.)
In 1972 Sims got Nash and Marley signed to CBS UK. Marley’s releases flopped, while Nash had a break out international smash with the reggae based “I Can See Clearly Now.” As a result, when Nash toured the U.K. in support of his hit it was Marley (and on occasion the Wailers) who opened for him. Sims took credit for getting two Marley compositions recorded by major stars: Barbra Streisand did “Guava Jelly” and Eric Clapton cut “I Shot the Sheriff.” But, ultimately, Marley was frustrated with the inability of CBS and Sims to launch the Wailer’s internationally.
After investing money and time in Marley from 1967 to ’72 Sims agreed to sell Marley’s contract to Chris Blackwell’s Island records where he would become a global icon. Sims was a self-described mobster, yet he was cool enough to let Marley move on (though having another five years as a partner in the performer’s song publishing made letting go easy.) That smooth transition, as well as memories of the years Sims put into Marley’s development, was likely why the singer-songwriter hired him back as his manager by 1980. That summer Marley was coming off a triumphant European tour, including a concert in Milan, Italy on June 27 where he drew 110,000 people to a soccer stadium. So, again, why open for the Commodores a few months later?
In 1980 WBLS, New York’s urban music powerhouse, was involved with the promotion of a Commodores’ gig at Madison Square Garden. Frankie Crocker wasn’t just BLS’s program director and a popular drive time personality, but had used his kingmaker position to become the top black concert promoter in the city. So, Sims and Crocker made a deal: play Marley’s danceable “Could You Be Loved” every hour on the hour for three months and Marley would open the Garden shows.
That was a shrewd move for all involved. Crocker got a way to boost ticket sales and Marley got guaranteed airplay before the nation’s largest black record buying audience. But Sims’ machinations for Marley in New York went beyond the usual music deal making. In 1976 two car loads of gun men had rolled up on Marley’s compound in Kingston and blasted away, injuring Marley and several others. Prior to the New York show Sims told Roger Steffens, “(Marley) felt threatened either because he got shot in Jamaica or there was something looking from that.” Because of Marley’s fear Sims arranged a sit down between Marley and Joe Armore, his longtime business partner and a capo in the Gambino crime family.
Marley was concerned that New York, with its huge Jamaican community, would be dangerous for him. So Armore agreed to supply Gambino thugs to do personal security in New York and elsewhere as the tour traveled across America. The image of Marley and a Mafia Don breaking bread is wild in itself, but the idea of mobsters on the lookout for Jamaican hit men sounds like the plot of ‘Goodfellows’ remixed with ‘The Harder They Come.’ Crazy as it sounds Sims apparently made it happen. Marley would only do one more show on the tour, a date in Pittsburgh, before the pain from his cancer overwhelmed him. Marley would die May 11, 1981.
After Marley’s death Sims, like many, profited from the musician’s legacy, releasing fifteen vintage recordings from his JAD label between 1995 and 2002. He would live in several countries, including the U.K. and Dominican Republic, before settling in Los Angeles where, reportedly, he had conversations with director Oliver Stone about a Bob Marley film. Colon cancer ended Sims’ very active life in October 2012.
It will be interesting to see - if at all - the upcoming Bob Marley bio pix deals with Sims role in Marley’s career.