Jimmy Cliff, a Grammy Award-winning singer and actor, who helped Jamaican reggae music find its place within global pop culture, is dead at 81.
“It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia,” Latifa Chambers, Cliff’s wife, said in a post on his official Instagram account.
Cliff’s award-winning career as a musician spanned decades and included some of reggae’s most memorable hits, including “Many Rivers to Cross.” He was inducted in 2010 into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which described him as reggae’s “first champion.”
“Jimmy Cliff was instrumental in spreading reggae beyond Jamaica,” the Hall of Fame said on its site . “A self-proclaimed shepherd of reggae, Cliff has gone all over the globe to pass on the mellow, sun-drenched sound.”
“Many Rivers” and two other hits — “You Can Get It If You Really Want” and “The Harder They Come” — were standouts on the official soundtrack for a 1972 film, also titled The Harder They Come, that featured Cliff as its star.
Cliff played a young reggae artist who’s drawn into what’s portrayed as the often-seedy world of music production in Jamaica.
“Cliff’s portrayal is riveting and authentic,” the Grammy Awards wrote in an appraisal of the soundtrack marking 50 years after the movie’s release. It noted that Cliff, who was born James Chambers, had seen at least some of what was portrayed in the film.
“While pursuing a career as a singer, Cliff saw firsthand the crime, violence and the survival of the fittest mindset within the ghetto areas where reggae was birthed,” the appraisal said.
Cliff was born on July 30, 1944, during a hurricane in the Somerton District of St. James, Jamaica, according to his official biography. Fourteen years later, he had his first hit, “Hurricane Hattie,” beginning a career that stormed on far into this century.
He won the Grammy for best reggae album in 1986 for Cliff Hanger and again in 2013 for Rebirth. He was nominated several other times.
His songs often touched on freedom from burdensome surroundings and authority figures — and, fittingly, noting his birth during a hurricane, also included references to nature and storms.
On “The Harder They Come” he sung of fighting “as sure as the sun will shine,” adding a few lines later, “But I’d rather be a free man in my grave/Than living as a puppet or a slave.”
His wife in a note to fans posted on Monday said she was thankful for all the friends and artists Cliff held dear.
“To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career,” Chambers wrote. “He really appreciated each and every fan for their love.”
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