"Groovin’ Kingston 12" Box Set Makes Its Debut Worldwide:
Reasoning with Producer Danny Sims

Bob Marley and The Wailers. Just the name alone conjures up images of boundless inspiration, rebellion and tragedy. The Marley catalog outsells more than any other artist in the world. Countless bootleg versions of this prolific fruit have flooded the global marketplace during the twenty-three years since Marley’s untimely death.

Danny Sims, an African-American pop music producer and businessman made a publishing deal with the late Marley that covered the publisher’s royalty share for each record or song sold. This deal was the root of Marley’s success globally because it linked the music to an international network of “co-publishers” who distributed and sold these songs to the ever-growing fan-base worldwide. This publishing deal changed recently when these songs, which came under Sims’ Cayman Music, were sold back to the estate of Bob Marley.

As an African American producer and business impresario during the turbulent 1960s, Sims came under scrutiny for music that was determined powerful to generate energy behind the uprisings of the civil rights movement. Sims moved to Jamaica, met Bob Marley, and began recording some 211 songs with The Wailers.

In an effort to combat the intense bootlegging worldwide of some of the most sought-after music from the past 25 years, Sims has inked a 10-year licensing deal to assemble and re-issue tracks to be released in box sets that will enjoy international distribution by the Universal Music Group, the world’s largest distributor.

This deal should warn retailers who are currently trading unlicensed Bob Marley and The Wailers music. In effect, this deal will clear their shelves of unauthorized material or else they will risk the loss of access to the vast Universal music catalog.

The new box set – GROOVIN’ KINGSTON 12 - features dub versions, guest appearances, and new tracks of music with The Wailers Band. Some of these tracks including "Music Gonna Teach," "One Love True Love" and the Peter Tosh version of "Little Green Apples" are released on CD for the first time. Other classics like “Redder Than Red” and versions of “Trenchtown Rock”, with a refrain that gives the box set its title are timeless gems.

Jahworks.org spoke with Danny Sims during a trip he made to the Los Angeles area. He currently divides his time between New York, London, and the Dominican Republic.

Justine Ketola: How did the GROOVIN’ KINGSTON 12 project come about?

Danny Sims: The album was put together by Universal with Jeremy Collingwood who has worked with Universal internationally (from London) for the past five years. When this deal came up between JAD Records and Universal, they asked me if Jeremy could interview me for the liner notes. That was two years ago. The deal took two years to get signed. When the album came out, I went to France to be interviewed by the media and everybody asked me about people that had previously worked with me (on re-issues of some of the same material for other distributors) and I responded that ‘I can’t hire people for Universal.’ These people, Bruno Blum and Roger Steffens had previously worked with Jeremy as compilers on the box set the “Complete Bob Marley and the Wailers, 1967-1972” which was distributed by Koch. Certainly I think they did a great job on the previous release. And if anything I was (also) glad that Jeremy was there to help with the deal. Jeremy had worked with Hip-O (a label division of Universal) on the reissues for their ‘oldie but goodie’ catalog, like Sam Cooke, and he worked with them with vinyl.

Justine Ketola: How are the album and other re-issues of your catalog going to combat the bootlegging of The Wailers material?

Danny Sims: Strangely enough, Jeremy Collingwood was working with Universal on the bootlegging of the stuff that is with Island Records. So he evidently said to them, ‘The only way you are going to solve it is if you get into the JAD catalog' because what they (bootleggers) are doing is combining the Island catalog with the JAD catalog using 3 or 4 songs from both catalogs. So if you had both catalogs, you could now clean up both catalogs for the kids (Marley’s descendants) once and for all.

There are 900 and some odd albums in the world that are in the stores. Before digital, you did not have that but right now if I send you a CD, you can copy it and that is the digital master. So you have got the people in the Far East, India, Thailand, Eastern Block countries, companies like Charly Records, Trojan Records, San Juan Records and Sinclair in Canada--all these companies are bootleggers. The Bob Marley kids probably earn 10% of the money from royalties from this. They (Universal) are doing great with the album in 60 territories right now. They say this album is doing as well as the Island product. Now what would be great is to get the Marley family, The Tosh people, Bunny Wailer to get on board with Universal and Island to stop the bootleggers because they own the publishing--I sold the publishing back to them. We have got to take these bootleggers to court. If you have been stealing for years, it is hard for somebody to stop you from stealing. And Bob Marley is the biggest artist on the planet. We sell more records than The Beatles, Elvis Presley on a catalog basis.

Justine Ketola: How did you get your start in the music business?

Danny Sims: Johnny Nash who was an American artist actually brought me into the business. I was in the restaurant business in New York. I had a restaurant in Times Square--Sapphire’s on West 47th Street in the Theatre District. I had all the big show people coming in my restaurant. And that was the first Black restaurant in Times Square. I sold soul food. We were open 24 hours and Johnny Nash, Sidney Poitier, (Harry) Belafonte and Ossie Davis, all of the entertainers used to come in. Johnny Nash used to be one of my customers--he was about 15 years old. He was on the ‘Arthur Godfrey Show’. He was a huge artists at ABC/Paramount. He came to me for management, we became partners and we started doing concerts in the Caribbean.

Justine Ketola: Why did you move to Jamaica?

Danny Sims: Johnny Nash was a pop singer. But the first R&B record that I ever got him to do was called “Move and Groove”. That record became #1 in the R&B market. A guy named Magnificent Donahue, a DJ from New York moved to LA, and we did a commercial with the track and we put it on every station in the country. And do you know what they put on the commercial? They put ‘burn baby burn’ and this record was #1 in Chicago and Watts and so the FBI called me and said ‘Danny we finally got you, you are out of your mind, they are burning down Watts, they are burning down the cities.’ We got on a plane and went to Jamaica, we moved to Jamaica. I didn’t even know Bob Marley then, we had a distributor at Federal Records.

Justine Ketola: It has been reported that you went down there for cheaper production costs.

Danny Sims: We went down there because we thought we were going to get killed by the CIA and the FBI. For ‘inciting a riot’ they called it. Detroit went down, Chicago went down, L.A. went down, the country just went up in flames and we were right in the midst of that. Jamaica was a place to get away from the shooting.

Justine Ketola: Were there a lot of studios down there at that time?

Danny Sims: There were no studios. The biggest studio was four tracks. We had to bring equipment down, engineers down. We used Lynn Taitt that was a Trinidadian that had that drum beat that everybody picked up on. Federal Records really helped us a lot.

Justine Ketola: How did you meet Bob Marley?

Danny Sims: Johnny Nash met Bob and Rita at a Grounation (Rasta/Nyabinghi session) in West Kingston and invited them to the house. We brought our whole production crew down there (to Jamaica). We brought 14 people down there. To us it was like paradise. We never really intended to stay because we had hit records in America. We had Gloria Gaynor, Lloyd Price, we were a hot little independent company...

Justine Ketola: How was Rastafarian elder Mortimer Planno involved in your partnership with Bob Marley?

Danny Sims: Mortimer was his manager and mentor. Mortimer was the beginning of his career. He should have more credit than anybody.

Justine Ketola: The general perception is that Chris Blackwell helped to take Bob Marley to the next level in his career. However, you are in effect the first person from outside Jamaica to shape Marley’s compositions for a universal marketplace, suggesting to him that he may want to temper his lyrics away from Rasta teachings. How did you do that?

Danny Sims: I do this with all artists. That is my job. I tell him what I think he needs to record in order to get his music sold. You know, you talk about Chris Blackwell. When I went to Zambia and went to Victoria Falls, they said Livingston discovered it. You know what is in the history books, right? Columbus discovered America. So when you say that white people discovered something, I also see that parable with Chris Blackwell--he has become like ‘Christopher Columbus discovered America.’ Not to put down Chris because I like Chris. Chris was in England with a very successful record company called Island Records. Bob was with one of the most successful companies in the world at that time, CBS. I think Chris did a great job. I published it and he was the record company. So I went to CBS and we made a deal, because CBS really just wanted Johnny Nash. He had 32 consecutive hit records, “I Can See Clearly Now”, “Guava Jelly”, “Stir It Up”, and Bob Marley was writing some of these records. He was writing for Eric Clapton, Barbara Streisand who had a hit with “Guava Jelly”….those were in my publishing days when I was out hustling songs. I got Eric Clapton to do “I Shot The Sheriff.”

Justine Ketola: How did you promote Bob Marley as a performing artist?

Danny Sims: We were promoting Bob--we did over 500 concerts with him and Johnny Nash together in England. We did every high school, every university... We played a club every weekend for free. We never got a dime. Sony and Rondor Music would sponsor showcases--we showcased seven days a week. And we promoted. Bob Marley when we put him with Island was hot. we started with Bob when he was in his early twenties. We had success. And we still have success. I am still selling lots of records on Johnny Nash.

Johnny Nash was a Black guy doing pop music. It is very difficult for him to have the kind of presence that Bob did. But the reverse is that this record [he holds up Groovin’ Kingston 12 box set] won’t sell to 15 Black people in America. This is a white record in America. But we are only a couple of percentage points of the population so it doesn’t hurt us that the black people don’t buy it, but in England and in Africa, in every house you go to they will have this. It is just America you see.

I explain to people who ask me, ‘Why don’t black people in America buy Bob Marley?’ We have genres here, we have Country and Western--you don’t see no black people buying country and western. You don’t see R& B people buying Pop. R&B people don’t buy Reggae, so therefore you have genres, and black people, Spanish (-speaking) people don’t buy Pop, they don’t buy Rock. We sold nothing on Bob Marley in America in the beginning. He was just a big touring act and then when "Legend" came out, it just outsold everything.

Justine Ketola: How many tracks did you have on "Legend"?

Danny Sims: I had all of them. I had the override (publishing) on every one of them. I published them. Island got the record royalty and I got the publishing royalty. I think what Island and Chris Blackwell did was great but he had something to do it with. We gave him a loaded bazooka. Because that’s what Bob Marley was. And on stage, he was the greatest. And now he is getting bigger and bigger. Right now, we outsell The Beatles, we outsell Elvis Presley, we outsell every act going, catalog-wise.

When Chris came to me with this “Songs of Freedom” (box set) in six weeks we sold a million copies at $54.00 a pop. That was huge. Our license with Chris didn’t allow us to put it out for ten years. So we couldn’t do anything until 2002, when the license reverted back to JAD Records. So that is why you see so many songs here and on the next release (from that box set).

You have got to remember that Chris Blackwell met Bob Marley when he was 29 years old. But Sony (CBS Records at that time) and JAD Records allowed Bob Marley to go to Island by releasing him from his contract. Bob was at CBS and we took an override (allowing for master recording rights) and we have still got an override to all of that material that they got on Bob Marley. Chris found Bob Marley when he was nearly a superstar.

Justine Ketola: People refer to you as the manager of Bob Marley at that time. Is that a fair characterization?

Danny Sims: We were American producers and when we got a track on Bob Marley we produced it differently and more professionally than anybody. Chris Blackwell, when he got with Bob, was already a great producer. Bob did the “I Can See Clearly” album. Bob Marley was capable of playing his instrument and he was a great producer and a great teacher.

I started working with Bob at the end of 1966. A lot of the other people started with Bob in the mid-seventies. We started with him ten years prior and owned all of the rights to his stuff. And the guy who wrote “Catch A Fire ”(Timothy White) wrote a bunch of misinformation. The only good thing about his stuff was the discography that Roger Steffens did. And he did as good a job that time. That was the only credible thing that was in the “Catch A Fire” book. I have not seen a credible book on the Wailers and the only person that could do a credible book on the Wailers would be Alan “Skill” Cole.

Alan “Skill” Cole was Marley’s best friend and probably as close to him as his mother was. But he was his best friend and was with him all of the time until he died. They were inseparable and to this day, nobody can even touch him. I am one of the only people that still talks to him. He is very clever, educated--he was one of the world’s greatest soccer players. He played in Brazil with Pele.

Justine Ketola: What is the future release schedule going to consist of for JAD & UME.

Danny Sims: We have got 4 box sets planned, and hopefully we are going to do a 10 CD box set. We are going to put the whole catalog in one box set. We have 29 pieces (or separate CD’s). So in this set you can get everything, plus you get the discography and the pictures... Jeremy’s idea was that we use pictures from the 60’s and early 70’s. People want to see the artist the way they looked in that period. And that is why it is getting such recognition. People like the recording because it is clean and the music is raw.

Justine Ketola: Where was most of this music recorded?

Danny Sims: Bob Marley with JAD Records recorded in Kingston, New York. He was with us for a little over a year there and a little over a year in Sweden and he was with us for two years in England… plus the stuff that we would record in Jamaica because he would go back to Jamaica a lot. Bob Marley was never happy unless he was in the studio recording. We would have to record him every day. It was not difficult to record Bob because he was so prolific--he had 500 songs. It was like a picnic at all times for us. In Kingston, those were the days when Bob Marley refused to record in what he called 'the babylon studio’ so we recorded at Randy’s. He wouldn’t go into Federal Records or Byron Lee’s studio. He just didn’t want to do anything with those kind of people. That was in those days when being around a Rasta was like being around a Black Panther.

Justine Ketola: They say that during the period when Bob Marley returned to Jamaica from America, it was after he received his call-up papers to be drafted to Vietnam. Is this true?

Danny Sims: That’s a rumor that if he had stayed in America he would have got drafted.

Justine Ketola: Is that what happened to you?

Danny Sims: I left America because of “Burn Baby Burn,” the riots, the CIA, the FBI and the police killing all the black people. I was at the top of the list. I thought I was gone, because I am not a freedom fighter that is out front. I am a behind the scenes kind of a guy and to get exposed like that…. I moved to Jamaica because of that and it turned out to be very good for me, but I didn’t go there for no music…..

Justine Ketola: What happened after that period in Jamaica ?

Danny Sims: In 1988 I moved to Africa and I lived in the palace with President Kunda before he got ousted and then I went with Mandela when he got out of jail in South Africa and I stayed there up until now. I was with Mandela and Hugh Masekela and do you remember a show called SARAFINA? I managed everybody in SARAFINA. I loved South Africa and I just think with all of the fuss, I don’t think that the African countries will ever get it together. It is just too wealthy and too much meddling. I saw it and I am too old--I got eight brothers and sisters, hundreds of nieces and nephews and I got my little daughter that just graduated from school in the U.S., so I wanted to be near. Nobody could visit me in South Africa. My heart is there, like I love Jamaica. I think I have more friends in Jamaica than I have anywhere in the world. I love more people in Jamaica than anywhere else in the world.

Alan “Skill” Cole and Mortimer Planno, they are my best friends. And I guess a friend is a friend, you know, he is a friend and you don’t have to be face to face to be his friend. But I learned that that Africa is not the place to be. It is a great place to be, it is a great feeling. But as long as there is wealth and diamonds and gold and oil and minerals, the West wants it and they're gonna keep brother fighting brother and as long as brother fights brother, and as long as one gets arms from one country and one from another, they are going to fight each other.

I moved to the Dominican Republic. I just thought that I would work out of New York and London and now with technology, I have been doing interviews all over, to the Eastern Bloc and all over. I have done 500 interviews for this album. I did Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, Yugoslavia, all kind of television and magazines. I did Australia , Japan, I have done everything except for the African countries. There is so much sh-t going on in Africa that we are not getting any sort of real response in Africa. How much is this album selling for? About $40... I don’t think in Africa they could afford to buy it.

Justine Ketola: How is the album selling around the world?

Danny Sims: Over 200,000 in sales, those that have shipped. Hopefully those are going to stick. The second one comes out in August, then there will be two more next year.

Justine Ketola: So these will be from that same era but with different themes?

Danny Sims: They are going to have different themes but with pictures from that era. Everything will be a storyline. The fourth one will be a collection of all four with an electronic press kit and it will tell the story going back to the family and all that war and stuff going down there and Bob getting shot. We’ll do an authentic version of what really happened so all that stuff you have heard, Alan “Skill” Cole will do the fourth along with Mortimer Planno.

What I am doing now is getting in touch with all these people like the engineers at that time and getting pictures from that time.

I had great success with the “Sun Is Shining” which was number one worldwide. I own that record. There was a disc jockey in the South of Spain in Ibiza who took a track and he got permission to do the beats with it. It was the biggest single Bob Marley’s ever had. I think that we are doing a lot of those. Just a one off track, just something to promote the catalog… The singles don’t make money but what they do is promote your stuff and bring people to us so Universal and us are going to do some of that stuff. Can you imagine Spanish dancehall with the Bob Marley vocal?

Justine Ketola: How do you feel about the current state of reggae and dancehall?

Danny Sims: I think that is what Jamaican music needs. They don’t need to keep with what Bob Marley was doing, they need to keep moving forward. I think the dancehall has been an example of something I have been saying for years. They can’t stay like Bob Marley. Nobody is going to be like Bob. He is a once in a lifetime event and nobody can match that. The guy had 500 songs when I met him. By the time I put him with Chris Blackwell, I guarantee that he did not write two songs. And by the time he met me, he did not write two songs. He had all those songs written when he was a kid. So when did he write them? He was up there in Nine Mile and all he was doing was just writing songs. He is a phenomenon.