Jimmy Cliff, the Jamaican musician and actor who helped popularize reggae around the world and paved the way for future stars of the genre such as Bob Marley, has died. He was 81 years old.
Cliff's wife, Latifah Chambers, announced about the singer's death in a statement posted on social media Monday, saying he “crossed the road due to a seizure followed by 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 Instagram post read. “He really appreciated every fan for their love.”
Cliff starred in the 1972 Jamaican crime film “The Harder They Come” and is known for the film's theme song and other songs including “Many Rivers to Cross” and “You Can Get It if You Really Want.”
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced this on social media. called Cliff “is a true cultural giant whose music brought the heart of our nation to the world.” He added that Cliff's songs “supported people through difficult times, inspired generations and helped shape the global respect that Jamaican culture enjoys today.” In addition to his wife, Cliff's survivors include the couple's two children, Lilty and Aken.
The Harder They Come, in which Cliff played a Robin Hood-like folk hero, became popular with audiences at home and in the United States, where it became a mainstay of the midnight movie scene. The film's soundtrack, featuring songs by Cliff and other Jamaican artists such as the Maytals and Desmond Dekker, became an international hit; in 2020, the album was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.
Cliff was born James Chambers in St. James Parish, Jamaica in 1944. As a young man, Cliff moved to Kingston to pursue music and achieved success with a string of local hits including “Hurricane Hattie”. In the mid-60s he went to London and struck a deal with Island Records, which later signed Marley; Cliff's 1969 single “Wonderful World Beautiful People” reached the top ten of the British pop charts.
“All I really wanted to do was release this creative thirst that was inside of me,” Cliff. said The Times in 1999.
However, he also captured the anti-war sentiment of the era with the song “Vietnam”, which, according to rock legend, Bob Dylan once called the best protest song ever written.
Cliff toured the world after “The Harder They Come”, which the Clash continued to test on 1979's “London Calling”. In 1976, Cliff performed on the first season of Saturday Night Live; he also spent time in Africa and converted to Islam.
In the early 1980s, Bruce Springsteen included Cliff's song “Trapped” in the E Street Band's concert repertoire; A live recording of the song appeared on the album “We Are the World” in 1985. Cliff sang on the Rolling Stones' Dirty Work album in 1986, the same year he won his first Grammy Award for his album Cliff Hanger.
In 1994, he reached the top 20 of Billboard's Hot 100 with a cover of Johnny Nash's “I Can See Clearly Now”, which he recorded for the film Cool Runnings. Cliff was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010; he won a second Grammy in 2013 for his album Rebirth, which he recorded with Tim Armstrong of the punk band Rancid and which he said was partly inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement.
“I wrote a song called ‘Vietnam’ about that era, about that war, about the people marching,” Cliff. said The Times in 2012. “People still march, but for a different reason. I feel like I need to sing about these things.”
Times writer Janine Shaults contributed to this report.
