Jimmy Cliff was one of the first reggae singers to enjoy a hit single in the UK. And one of the outliers who turned Jamaica’s national music into a global sound.
Not the first – Millie had already had the novelty ska hit My Boy Lollipop back in 1963 – followed in 1967 by Desmond Dekker, first with 007 (Shanty Town) and, a year later, the first reggae chart-topper Israelites.
Jimmy Cliff made an indelible mark in 1969 with the upbeat ska and social commentary of Wonderful World, Beautiful People, followed by the openly political Vietnam and his biggest hit of all with a cover of Cat Stevens’ Wild World.
But he made his biggest impact when he starred in the film The Harder They Come. Cliff not only starred as Jamaica’s original rude boy Ivanhoe Martin, aka ‘Rhyging’ – an outlaw criminal and folk hero from the 1940s – but wrote and sang the title track:
The soundtrack of the movie, whose patois dialogue required subtitles in America, is like a reggae primer for newcomers, packed with familiar hits past and future, and is credited with introducing an American audience to Jamaican music.
It includes Pressure Drop by Toots & The Maytals, Rivers Of Babylon by The Melodians, Johnny Too Bad by The Slickers. Another standout is a version of The Spanishtonians’ old ska tune Stop That Train later popularised by rocksteady duo Keith & Tex and now by deejay Scotty under the new title Draw Your Brakes – arguably one of the first examples of ‘toasting’ to be heard outside Jamaica.
But it was Cliff’s own title track, and two other self-penned songs, Many Rivers To Cross (later covered by UB40) and You Can Get It If You Really Want, that put him on the international music map.
Ironically, and unfairly, it was Desmond Dekker’s version – singing over the same backing track as Cliff, and released just weeks later – that became a hit single.
He had launched his music career back in the early 1960s with producer Leslie Kong, and his career took off after being signed up by Island Records boss Chris Blackwell, fresh from signing Bob Marley & The Wailers.
Island brought him to London and initially tried to sell him to a rock audience, just as they did with Marley by remixing Catch A Fire with extra guitars. They even persuaded Cliff to record a cover of A Whiter Shade Of Pale in a bid to find a crossover hit but it didn’t work and Cliff hated it here.
He described London as “a bitch” – a description echoed a few years later by Linton Kwesi Johnson in Inglan Is A Bitch – during his time here, adding: “I experienced racism in a manner I had never experienced before.”
His final UK hit came in 1994 with I Can See Clearly Now, a cover of Johnny Nash’s 1972 hit, aptly taken from another successful movie, Cool Runnings, loosely based on the Jamaican bobsleigh team’s glorious failure at the Olympics.
More recently he forged an unlikely musical collaboration with the Californian punk band Rancid, winning a 2013 Grammy for Best Reggae Album for Rebirth, produced by their guitarist Tim Montgomery.
The highlight is this surprisingly great version of The Clash song Guns Of Brixton with a vocal that, with all apologies to Paul Simonon, is a significant improvement on the original.