Mortimer Planno
Producer. Rocksteady, reggae, roots
- Active
- 1958-2006
- Sunrise
- September 6, 1929, Cuba
- Sunset
- March 5, 2006
- Also known as
- Mortimo Planno, Mortimo Planner
Mortimer Planno was a Rastafari elder and teacher in Trench Town who brought Haile Selassie down the steps of his plane in 1966, and who became Bob Marley's spiritual guide and, for a few months, the Wailers' manager and producer.
He was born in Cuba to a Cuban father and a Jamaican mother, who brought the family to Jamaica in the early 1930s. By the 1950s he was a prominent Rastafari teacher in Kingston: he helped found the Rastafari Movement Association and a local branch of the Ethiopian World Federation, organized the first Universal Grounation in Back-O-Wall in 1958, and in 1961 went with two other Rastafari leaders on the official mission to Africa, where he met Selassie in Ethiopia.
When Selassie landed at Palisadoes on April 21, 1966, the crowd overran the airport and the emperor stayed on board; the government had to call on Planno, "a greatly respected Rasta elder," to go up the steps and lead him through the crowd, and then to invite him to the civic functions of the visit. Marley, a neighbor in Trench Town, fell under his influence from late 1966. Planno looked after the Wailers' business when Danny Sims and Johnny Nash first met them, "the nearest they had to a manager," and in 1968 he financed the session at JBC for "Selassie Is the Chapel," adapted from an existing song. He departed in 2006; Jalani Niaah of the University of the West Indies called him "the Rastafari ecumenical leader extraordinaire," and Mutabaruka remembered him as "the first man who introduced me on a stage."
Last updated November 5, 2026
Connections
- Bob Marley (artist)
- The Wailers (artist)
- Johnny Nash (worked with)
- Danny Sims (worked with)
Notes
- Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 193, 405.
- "Mortimer Planno," Wikipedia, accessed October 21, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortimer_Planno, citing David Katz's obituary in the Independent, April 25, 2006.
- "Mortimer Planno," citing the minority report of the 1961 mission and Giulia Bonacci, Exodus, Heirs and Pioneers (2015).
- Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 193. James Ferguson, "From Garvey to Grounation: On This Day," Caribbean Beat, February 28, 2026, https://www.caribbean-beat.com/?p=54155.
- "Mortimer Planno." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 405, quoting Danny Sims, and 411.
- "Mortimer Planno." Basil Walters, "Rastafari Icon Mortimo Planno Passes On," Jamaica Observer, March 7, 2006, https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2006/03/07/rastafari-icon-mortimo-planno-passes-on, which spells the name Mortimo St George Planno.
