Groovin’ Kingston 12 Box Set

Reasoning With Danny Sims
By Justine Ketola

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, a pop music producer and impresario made a publishing deal with the late Marley that covered the publisher’s royalty share for each record or song sold.

As a an African American producer and business impresario during the turbulent ‘60’s, Sims came under scrutiny for music that was determined powerful to foment the 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 the international distribution muscle of the Universal Music Group, the world’s largest distributor.

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. Below is an excerpt from an interview with Danny Sims.

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.

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

Danny Sims: Johnny Nash was an American artist, he 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, it was an entertainer hangout and 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 went 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 and a guy named  Magnificent Donahue a DJ from New York moved to LA and we  are going to do a commercial with the track and we are going  to 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 flamesand we were right in the midst of that. Jamaica was a place to get away from the shooting.