Reggae legend, pioneer and actor Jimmy Cliff dies at 81 – National

Jimmy Cliff, the charismatic reggae pioneer and actor who preached joy, rebellion and resilience in classics such as There's a River to Cross, You Can Get It If You Want It and Vietnam and starred in the groundbreaking film The Harder They Come, has died at the age of 81.

His family posted a message on social media sites on Monday saying he died from a “seizure and subsequent pneumonia.” Additional information was not immediately available.

“To all his fans around the world, please know that your support has been his strength throughout his career,” the announcement reads in part. “He really appreciated the love from each and every one of his fans.”

A Jamaican-born musician with a peppy tenor and a talent for catchphrases and topical lyrics, Cliff joined Kingston's emerging music scene as a teenager and helped lead a movement that included future stars such as Bob Marley, Toots Hibbert and Peter Tosh in the 1960s. By the early 1970s, he accepted director Perry Hensel's offer to star in a film about Ivanhoe “Ivan” Martin, an aspiring reggae musician whose career stalls and he turns to crime. Hensel named the film “The Harder They Come” after suggesting the title as a possible song for Cliff.

“Ivanhoe was a real-life character for Jamaicans,” Cliff told Variety in 2022, the 50th anniversary of the film's release. “When I was a kid, I always heard that he was a bad guy. He was a really bad guy. No one had guns in Jamaica at the time. But he had a gun and he shot the cops, so he was feared. But what Perry wanted to make a name for himself was to be a hero. He was an antihero, in the same way that Hollywood turns bad guys into heroes.”

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The Harder They Come was delayed for approximately two years due to sporadic financing, but became the first major commercial release from Jamaica. Despite praise from Roger Ebert and other critics, few tickets were sold at the premiere. But the soundtrack is now a cultural touchstone, widely cited as the greatest of all time and a turning point in reggae's global rise.

For a short time, Cliff rivaled Marley as the genre's most prominent artists. Cliff was the featured artist on four of the 11 songs on the album, which featured Toots and the Maytals, The Slickers and Desmond Dekker, all of which are up there with reggae standards.

Sitting in Limbo was a moody but hopeful look at life in restless motion. If you really want it, you can have it And the title song was a call to action and a pledge of final payment: “The more they come, the harder they get, everyone,” Cliff wearily cries on Many Rivers to Cross, a gospel-like testament he wrote after facing racism in Britain in the 1960s.

“It was a very frustrating time. I came to England with great hopes and watched those hopes disappear,” he told Rolling Stone in 2012.

music lives on

Cliff's career peaked with The Harder They Come, but after a hiatus in the late 1970s, he continued to work steadily for several decades, including session work with the Rolling Stones and collaborations with Wyclef Jean, Sting, and Annie Lennox. Meanwhile, his early music lived on. Nicaragua's Sandinistas used “You Can Get it If You Really Want” as a campaign theme, and Bruce Springsteen helped grow Cliff's U.S. audience with a live cover of the reggae star's “Trapped” from his 1985 million-selling charity album “We Are the World.” Other performers of his songs include John Lennon, Cher and UB40.

current trends

Cliff has been nominated for seven Grammy Awards and won twice for Best Reggae Album: 1986's Cliff Hunger and 2012's famous Rebirth, widely regarded as his best work in recent years. His other albums include the Grammy-nominated The Power and the Glory, Humanitarian, and the 2022 release Refugees. He also appeared in Steve Van Zandt's protest anthem “Sun City,” appeared in the Robin Williams comedy film “Club Paradise,” contributing several songs to its soundtrack, and sang with Elvis Costello on the rocker “Seven Day Weekend.”

In 2010, Cliff was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

He was born James Chambers on the outskirts of St. James and, like Ivan Martin in The Harder They Come, moved to Kingston at a young age to become a musician. In the early 1960s, Jamaica was gaining independence from Britain and the early reggae sound, originally called ska and rocksteady, was gaining popularity. Calling himself Jimmy Cliff, he had several local hits, including “King of Kings'' and “Miss Jamaica,'' and after overcoming obstacles that turned Martin upside down, he was called up to represent his country at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.

“[Reggae]is pure music. It came from a poor class of people. It came from a need for recognition, identity and respect,” he told Spin in 2022.

approaching stardom

His popularity grew through the late 1960s, and he was signed to Island Records, one of the world's leading reggae labels. Although Island founder Chris Blackwell tried to sell Cliff to rock audiences to no avail, Cliff still succeeded in gaining new listeners. He had a hit with his cover of Cat Stevens' “Wild World'' and reached the UK Top 10 with the uplifting “Wonderful World'' and “Beautiful People.'' Cliff's widely heard rallying cry, “Vietnam,” was inspired in part by a friend who served in the war and returned home disfigured beyond recognition.

Cliff remembers him saying that his success as a recording artist and concert performer led to Hansel asking to meet him and flattering him into accepting the role, “You know, I think you're a better actor than a singer.'' Aware that The Harder They Come had the potential to be a breakthrough in Jamaican cinema and openly aspired to stardom, Cliff was surprised by his level of recognition.

“At the time, very few of us of African descent had overcome hardships to get any kind of recognition. It was easier to do music than film. But when you started seeing your face and name on the side of a bus in London, you were like, 'Wow, what's going on?'” he told the Guardian in 2021.

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