November 11, 1968 (1 week)
I didn't know who he was at the time but it's very likely that my favourite singer as a boy was Johnny Nash. Was this because I was fond of "I Can See Clearly Now"? No but I would eventually come to love it. Or "Tears on My Pillow", his lone number one hit in Great Britain? Wrong again. No, I got sucked in by Nash's work on the theme to the cartoon The Mighty Hercules.
Hercales (as it was known at the time, at least in the household I grew up in) was a very low budget series of shorts based on the Greek demigod of the same name. (Yes, yes, I know he was originally called 'Heracles'; in my experience, the people who insist on always bringing this very well known fact up are the same folk who claim that "the Romans copied the Greeks" which is a bit of an over-simplification) 'Based on' ought to be used very loosely. It was made as if someone had chosen a bunch of Greco-Roman names at random and thrown them into a whole host of stories that were vaguely from antiquity. Episodes were short and typically involved the titular character, along with friends Helena, Newton and Tewt, foiling the evil schemes of Daedalus, Wilhelmine and/or Murtis (aka the Mask of Vulcan). Plots were dreadfully predictable. I couldn't get enough of it — and that goes for Johnny Nash's theme song as well.
Hercules, hero of song and story,
Hercules, winner of ancient glory,
Fighting for the right, fighting with his might,
With the strength of ten ordinary men
Hercules, people are safe when near him,
Hercules, only the evil fear him,
Softness in his eyes, iron in his thighs
Virtue in his heart, fire in every part
Of the mighty Hercules!
(My sister was less of a fan of it, composing such witty variant lines as "Hercules, he's made of ham and baloney / Hercules, he's just a big fat phony" and "With the strength of ten little paper men")
Through a very long career, Nash settled into being the first US reggae star. (John Lennon seemed to unwittingly start a myth that Americans didn't know anything about Jamaican music but this seems to have only applied to the white studio session players in New York that he dealt with) In reality, however, he had a smooth vocal range that could fit with just about any genre. While his first RPM number one "Hold Me Tight" was done in a rocksteady style, it could just as easily have been any number of genres that he saw fit.
As a matter of fact, "Hold Me Tight" sounds like it had originally been a country number that Nash then adapted to reggae. The singer's southern twang even betrays these supposed roots. However, country singer Johnny Carver had a minor American hit with his cover version of it in 1969, rather than the other way around. Yet, this seems to point to its one real weakness: at the end of the day, it's just a generic pop lament, just as forgettable within reggae as it is in country. Give credit to Nash for not dressing it up in phony Jamaican patois but it doesn't save what is a very bland offering. Give me The Mighty Hercules theme song any day.
