Jimmy Cliff, the Jamaican singer, actor and cultural ambassador for reggae music, who starred in and wrote the title song for the iconic 1972 film “The Harder They Come,” has died, according to a message from his wife. He was 81.
A message from his wife Latifa Chambers on Instagram reads: “It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia. I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him. To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career … Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace. I will follow your wishes.” Her message was also signed by their children, Lilty and Aken.
His hits also included “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” the oft-covered “Many Rivers to Cross” and “Wonderful World, Beautiful People.” In 2003, he was awarded Jamaica’s prestigious Order of Merit. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, and the Library of Congress placed “The Harder They Come” into the National Recording Registry in 2021.
Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness paid tribute to Cliff, calling him “a true cultural giant whose music carried the heart of our nation to the world … Jimmy Cliff told our story with honesty and soul. His music lifted people through hard times, inspired generations, and helped to shape the global respect that Jamaican culture enjoys today.”
Cliff was born James Chambers in Saint James, Jamaica in 1944, and his music career began in the early 1960s after he moved to the island’s capital Kingston and began collaborating with producer Leslie Kong, whose family owned a record store. Cliff captured Kong’s attention by name-dropping him in one of his songs and joined forces with Kong as both an artist and a talent scout — and steered him toward a young Bob Marley.
Marley “had that aura: ‘I’m here’, you know?,” Cliff told Uncut earlier this year. “How I discovered him, I was A&R person for Beverley’s Records and he was sent to me by Desmond Dekker, who I had auditioned earlier. He got his song recorded, so he went and told Bob as they both used to work at the same place, as welders. Bob Marley walked in like somebody who was in a hurry to get somewhere. I sensed he was a very rhythmic person, and very aware of the power of words – that told me he would be a star. It’s a good feeling to know that he passed through my hands.”
Cliff had a number of local hits and represented Jamaica at the World’s Fair in New York in 1964. But his path to global stardom gained traction when he signed with Chris Blackwell’s Island Records, which had brought reggae to the world with Millie Brown’s 1964 smash “My Boy Lollipop.”
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While Blackwell moved Cliff to London — where he “experienced racism in a manner I had never experienced before,” he said — and initially steered him in a rock direction, until his breakthrough hit, 1969’s “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” reached No. 6 on the British charts.
He returned to the British top 10 the following year with a cover of Cat Stevens’ “Wild World,” but it was the Perry Henzell’s 1972 Jamaica-based gangster film “The Harder They Come,” in which Cliff starred, that not only brought him to the global stage but made him an icon for reggae music.
The soundtrack album, with such Cliff classics as the title track, “You Can Get It If You Really Want” and his beautiful earlier ballad “Many Rivers to Cross,” along with songs by Dekker, Toots & the Maytals and others, served as an introduction to reggae for countless millions of people. The film was eventually released in the U.S. three years later and spurred the album’s sales and was a midnight movie favorite.
His character, Ivanhoe Martin, “was a real-life character for Jamaicans,” Cliff told Variety in 2023. “When I was a little boy, I used to hear about him as being a bad man. A real bad man. No one in Jamaica, at that time, had guns. But he had guns and shot a policeman, so he was someone to be feared.
“I may not be a bad man,” he continued with a laugh. “But I have known a lot of bad men. When I got to Kingston, I was among those types of people a lot. When I was shooting the movie I even got a chance to speak to them, ask them if they would do what I was doing in the movie. So I am a man of peace, but I knew plenty of people who were not.”
Cliff’s naturalistic and magnetic performance, the film’s exotic Trenchtown tenement setting and a vibrant reggae soundtrack turned “The Harder They Come” into a cult hit. The belatedly released soundtrack album peaked at No. 140 in the U.S. in 1975 and set the stage for Marley, whose first American chart albums with the Wailers appeared the same year.
Cliff sustained international prominence with a series of albums for Reprise, Warner Bros. and MCA in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. During his 1980-81 “The River Tour,” Bruce Springsteen performed a show-stopping version of Cliff’s 1972 Cat Stevens-produced track “Trapped.”
At the turn of the decade, Cliff made his first concert appearances in Africa. He converted to Islam (after observing Rastafarian and then Christian beliefs), taking on the name El Hadj Naim Bachir.
His subsequent albums found him dabbling in African rhythms and moving into funk. “Cliff Hanger,” co-produced with La Toya Jackson and Kool and the Gang’s Amir-Salaam Bayyan, featured both top Jamaican studio players and guests like jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius; the set became Cliff’s first Grammy winner.
From the late ‘80s onward, Cliff recorded with less frequency and, despite regular touring, rang up few hits. He broke back into the American reggae charts with his 2004 album “Black Magic”; the 2011 Armstrong-produced EP “The Sacred Fire” and the album “Rebirth” both reached the apex of the genre chart, with the latter reaching No. 76 on the top 200 albums chart.
In 1994, he scored a global hit with a cover of Johnny Nash’s hit “I Can See Clearly Now” — itself a pioneering reggae-spangled hit — which appeared on the soundtrack to the Jamaican film “Cool Runnings.”
He continued touring and recording in the following years, scoring two Grammy Awards. His most recent album was 2022’s “Refugees.”
From Variety US