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Reggae artist Sister Nancy has soared to the top of the charts without releasing any new material. Thanks to Netflix’s hit series Ozark, Sister Nancy’s 1982 hit “Bam Bam” has landed in the number one slot on the Top Reggae iTunes chart and at number two on Amazon’s Best Sellers list in the Reggae category. “Bam Bam” plays towards the end of season four’s premiere episode titled “The Beginning of the End.”
“Of course, I watched it. It’s not the first time [the song has been number one], Sister Nancy told the Jamaica Observer. “You have to feel good when something like this happens. I remember recording like it was yesterday. Bam Bam is my life. Otherwise from my daughter, it’s my whole life, it’s how I live. I have not forgotten anything.”
Besides resurging on iTunes and Amazon, “Bam Bam,” which appeared on her One, Two album, was also certified silver in the United Kingdom in January after being streamed over 200,000 times.
Even though it was released in the 1980s, Sister Nancy, born Ophlin Russell, didn’t know that “Bam Bam” was an international hit until almost 15 years after it was released.
“In those times, I never heard “Bam Bam” play one time in Jamaica. I only heard One Two and Transport Connection, them were the only tunes they used to play in Jamaica,” she told The Fader in 2017. “Those were the only two I heard while I was there. It was when I migrated [to the U.S.] in 1996, that I knew how big “Bam Bam” is. I didn’t know, I never had a clue because the producer never wanted me to know. He knew because he was traveling, and I was not.”
Surprisingly, Sister Nancy had never been compensated for the song. She said the producer, Winston Riley, knew how successful the song was outside of Jamaica and never told her because he knew she would want to be paid royalties. She said he also went behind her back to ensure he would reap all of the benefits of the song’s success.
“I did copyright the album, but I think he went behind my back and took ‘Bam Bam’,” she also told The Fader about Riley. “Of all the ten songs, I copyrighted all of them under my name, Sister Nancy, and my correct name too, which is Ophlin Russell, and then he took ‘Bam Bam’ from the album, the copyright, changed it totally, so I will get a little money for the rest of the nine songs, but I wouldn’t get anything for “Bam Bam.”
When she saw that “Bam Bam” was featured in a 2014 Reebok commercial, she contacted a lawyer who got in touch with the company who owned the song and the One, Two album, Westbury Music in England.
“His two sons, they are the ones, with Westbury Music,” she said about Riley’s sons who ultimately helped her. “What the lawyer did was to write them, and deal with them. Because I haven’t received anything from the record for 32 years. They told me they couldn’t give me back 32 years, so they paid me 10 years out of the 32, and gave me 50 percent rights of the whole album, and publishing, everything. It’s a lot better, because at least I get my fair share of royalties, and fair share of everything.”
“Bam Bam” is the most sampled reggae song of all time.
