Business
Danny Sims, music entrepreneur & Bob Marley producer dies
Danny Simms. PHOTO/Hayes Sahlan
Danny Sims, who has died aged 75, was one of the first black music entrepreneurs and the first non-Jamaican to recognise the global potential of the reggae superstar Bob Marley.
Marley was still finding his professional feet outside Jamaica when his songs Stir It Up and Guava Jelly became big hits for the singer Johnny Nash in the early 1970s. Sims signed Marley to his publishing company, Cayman Music, paid him a retainer of US$100 a week and brought in leading American musicians to work alongside him, together with the South African Hugh Masekela and the composer Jimmy Norman. It was Sims’s publishing links that led to Eric Clapton covering Marley’s I Shot the Sheriff, which topped the American charts.
In the early 1960s Sims met Johnny Nash and struck up a friendship which ripened into a business partnership. With Arthur Jenkins, they formed the JODA label, later known as JAD, and in 1965 moved to Jamaica. When Nash heard Bob Marley sing at a Rastafarian celebration he urged Sims to sign him up.
Later, Marley and the Wailers struck a deal with Chris Blackwell’s Island Records. Sims published Marley’s songs from 1967 until 1977, and in 1981 Marley (then in the advanced stages of cancer) stayed with him for several months before his death.