Reggae pioneer Jimmy Cliff dies at 81

Jim­my Cliff, the charis­mat­ic reg­gae pi­o­neer and ac­tor who preached joy, de­fi­ance and re­silience in such clas­sics as “Many Rivers to Cross,” “You Can Get it If You Re­al­ly Want” and “Viet­nam” and starred in the land­mark movie “The Hard­er They Come,” has died at 81.

His fam­i­ly post­ed a mes­sage Mon­day on his so­cial me­dia sites that he died from a “seizure fol­lowed by pneu­mo­nia.” Ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion was not im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able.

“”To all his fans around the world, please know that your sup­port was his strength through­out his whole ca­reer,” the an­nounce­ment reads in part. “He re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed each and every fan for their love.”

Cliff was a na­tive Ja­maican with a spir­it­ed tenor and a gift for catch­phras­es and top­i­cal lyrics who joined Kingston’s emerg­ing mu­sic scene in his teens and helped lead a move­ment in the 1960s that in­clud­ed such fu­ture stars as Bob Mar­ley, Toots Hi­b­bert and Pe­ter Tosh. By the ear­ly 1970s, he had ac­cept­ed di­rec­tor Per­ry Hen­zell’s of­fer to star in a film about an as­pir­ing reg­gae mu­si­cian, Ivan­hoe “Ivan” Mar­tin, who turns to crime when his ca­reer stalls. Hen­zell named the movie “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, up­on the film’s 50th an­niver­sary. “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. How­ev­er, be­ing a hero was the man­ner in which Per­ry want­ed to make his name — an an­ti-hero in the way that Hol­ly­wood turns its bad guys in­to he­roes.”

“The Hard­er They Come,” de­layed for some two years be­cause of spo­radic fund­ing, was the first ma­jor com­mer­cial re­lease to come out of Ja­maica. It sold few tick­ets in its ini­tial run, de­spite praise from Roger Ebert and oth­er crit­ics. But it now stands as a cul­tur­al touch­stone, with a sound­track wide­ly cit­ed as among the great­est ever and as a turn­ing point in reg­gae’s world­wide rise.

For a brief time, Cliff ri­valled Mar­ley as the genre’s most promi­nent artist. On an al­bum that in­clud­ed Toots and the May­tals, the Slick­ers and Desmond Dekker, Cliff was the fea­tured artist on four out of 11 songs, all well placed in the reg­gae canon.

“Sit­ting in Lim­bo” was a moody, but hope­ful take on a life in rest­less mo­tion. “You Can Get it If You Re­al­ly Want” and the ti­tle song were calls for ac­tion and vows of fi­nal pay­ments: “The hard­er they come, the hard­er they fall, one and all.” Cliff oth­er­wise lets out a weary cry on “Many Rivers to Cross,” a gospel-style tes­ta­ment that he wrote af­ter con­fronting racism in Eng­land in the 1960s.

“It was a very frus­trat­ing time. I came to Eng­land with very big hopes, and I saw my hopes fad­ing,” he told Rolling Stone in 2012.

The mu­sic lives on

Cliff’s ca­reer peaked with “The Hard­er They Come,” but, af­ter a break in the late 1970s, he worked steadi­ly for decades, whether ses­sion work with the Rolling Stones or col­lab­o­ra­tions with Wyclef Jean, Sting and An­nie Lennox among oth­ers. Mean­while, his ear­ly mu­sic lived on. The San­din­istas in Nicaragua used “You Can Get it If You Re­al­ly Want” as a cam­paign theme and Bruce Spring­steen helped ex­pand Cliff’s U.S. au­di­ence with his live cov­er of the reg­gae star’s “Trapped,” fea­tured on the mil­lion-sell­ing char­i­ty al­bum from 1985, “We Are the World.” Oth­ers per­form­ing his songs in­clud­ed John Lennon, Cher and UB40.

Cliff was nom­i­nat­ed for sev­en Gram­mys and won twice for best reg­gae al­bum: in 1986 for “Cliff Hang­er” and in 2012 for the well-named “Re­birth,” wide­ly re­gard­ed as his best work in years. His oth­er al­bums in­clud­ed the Gram­my-nom­i­nat­ed “The Pow­er and the Glo­ry,” “Hu­man­i­tar­i­an” and the 2022 re­lease “Refugees.” He al­so per­formed on Steve Van Zandt’s protest an­them, “Sun City,” and act­ed in the Robin Williams com­e­dy “Club Par­adise,” for which he con­tributed a hand­ful of songs to the 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 in sub­ur­ban Saint James and, like Ivan Mar­tin in “The Hard­er They Come,” moved to Kingston in his youth to be­come a mu­si­cian. In the ear­ly 1960s, Ja­maica was gain­ing its in­de­pen­dence from Britain and the ear­ly sounds of reg­gae — first called ska and rock­steady — were catch­ing on. Call­ing him­self Jim­my Cliff, he had a hand­ful of lo­cal hits, in­clud­ing “King of Kings” and “Miss Ja­maica,” and, af­ter over­com­ing the kinds of bar­ri­ers that up­end­ed Mar­tin, was called on to help rep­re­sent his coun­try at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City.

“(Reg­gae) is a pure mu­sic. It was born of the poor­er class of peo­ple,” he told Spin in 2022. “It came from the need for recog­ni­tion, iden­ti­ty and re­spect.”

Ap­proach­ing star­dom

His pop­u­lar­i­ty grew over the sec­ond half of the 1960s, and he signed with Is­land Records, the world’s lead­ing reg­gae la­bel. Is­land founder Chris Black­well tried in vain to mar­ket him to rock au­di­ences, but Cliff still man­aged to reach new lis­ten­ers. He had a hit with a cov­er of Cat Stevens’ “Wild World,” and reached the top 10 in the UK with the up­lift­ing “Won­der­ful World, Beau­ti­ful Peo­ple.” Cliff’s wide­ly heard protest chant, “Viet­nam,” was in­spired in part by a friend who had served in the war and re­turned dam­aged be­yond recog­ni­tion.

His suc­cess as a record­ing artist and con­cert per­former led Hen­zell to seek a meet­ing with him and flat­ter him in­to ac­cept­ing the part: “You know, I think you’re a bet­ter ac­tor than singer,” Cliff re­mem­bered him say­ing. Aware that “The Hard­er They Come” could be a break­through for Ja­maican cin­e­ma, he open­ly wished for star­dom, al­though Cliff re­mained sur­prised by how well known he be­came.

“Back in those days there were few of us African de­scen­dants who came through the cracks to get any kind of recog­ni­tion,′ he told The Guardian in 2021. “It was eas­i­er in mu­sic than movies. But when you start to see your face and name on the side of the bus­es in Lon­don that was like: ‘Wow, what’s go­ing on?’”

NEW YORK (AP) —