World of Jamaican Music

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An illustrated map of the creators of Jamaican music and how they are connected.

Remembering Derrick Harriott (1939-2026), rocksteady singer and producer. Read his story →

Jimmy Cliff

Artist. Ska, rocksteady, reggae

Active
1962-2025
Sunrise
July 30, 1944, Somerton, St. James, Jamaica
Sunset
November 24, 2025 (seizure and pneumonia)

James Chambers, who recorded as Jimmy Cliff, was a singer and songwriter whose starring role in The Harder They Come (1972) did more than any other single thing to carry reggae beyond Jamaica.

He was born in St. James, the second youngest of nine children, and moved to Kingston in the late 1950s to study electronics at Kingston Technical, lodging with a cousin. He approached Leslie Kong, who was not yet making records, and after two unsuccessful singles had a hit at seventeen with "Hurricane Hattie." He stayed with Kong until Kong's sunset in 1971. Other Jamaican hits followed, among them "King of Kings," "Miss Jamaica," and "Dearest Beverley." He was one of Jamaica's representatives at the 1964 New York World's Fair and appeared that year in the film This Is Ska! alongside Prince Buster, Toots and the Maytals, and Byron Lee and the Dragonaires.

The voice carried all of it. David Katz describes a distinctive high tenor, and the themes it carried, civil and human rights, reached listeners far beyond Jamaica; on stage he remained a dynamic performer into his seventies. It was a soul voice as well: arriving in Kingston as a boy, Bradley writes, he disguised his age by singing in unnaturally gruff tones, and in the rocksteady years, as a Kingston musician of the time told Bradley, Jimmy Cliff sounded like Otis Redding.

He signed to Island and moved to Britain, where the label first tried to find him a British pop audience. His international debut album, Hard Road to Travel (1967), included "Waterfall," which won the International Song Festival and became a hit in Brazil. "Wonderful World, Beautiful People" and "Many Rivers to Cross" followed in 1969, as did "Vietnam," which Bob Dylan called the best protest song he had heard. His cover of Cat Stevens's "Wild World" reached number eight in Britain in 1970.

Perry Henzell cast him as Ivanhoe Martin in The Harder They Come. The soundtrack sold internationally and was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2020. Paul Simon recorded "Mother and Child Reunion" with Cliff's backing band.

He left Island and recorded afterward for EMI and Columbia. By the early 1970s he had joined the Nation of Islam, and after meeting a Sufi leader in Senegal in 1977 turned to a more traditional Islam, taking the name El Hadj Naïm Bachir; in later interviews he said he no longer aligned himself with any religion. In 1980 he played in Soweto to a mixed audience of 55,000, a controversial concert given in spite of the ban on performing in apartheid South Africa. He worked with Kool and the Gang and had a hit with "Reggae Night" in 1983. Bruce Springsteen took up his song "Trapped," which appeared on the We Are the World album in 1985. Cliff Hanger (1985) won a Grammy. He sang backing vocals on the Rolling Stones' Dirty Work (1986), co-starred in Club Paradise the same year, and reached a mass audience again with "I Can See Clearly Now" from the Cool Runnings soundtrack in 1993.

Jamaica awarded him the Order of Merit in October 2003. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2010 by Wyclef Jean, and was one of only two Jamaicans in it, the other being Bob Marley. Rebirth (2012), made with Tim Armstrong of Rancid, won him a second Grammy. His last album was Refugees (2022). He departed in Kingston on November 24, 2025, at eighty-one; the cause was pneumonia following a seizure.

Last updated October 31, 2026

Connections

Notes

  1. Bradley says The Harder They Come soundtrack was "the best-selling reggae album ever" until Marley's Legend (1984). Lloyd Bradley, This Is Reggae Music: The Story of Jamaica's Music (New York: Grove Press, 2001), 284. The Rough Guide calls the film "the first glimpse of Jamaica for many white audiences." Steve Barrow and Peter Dalton, The Rough Guide to Reggae, 3rd ed. (London: Rough Guides, 2004), 385.
  2. Wikipedia gives the family size and has him going to Kingston with his father at fourteen. "Jimmy Cliff," Wikipedia, accessed October 2, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Cliff. Katz says he was born in Adelphi, in the Somerton district near Montego Bay, was raised with his older brother by their father after his parents parted, and moved to Kingston in the late 1950s to study electronics at Kingston Technical, lodging with a cousin. David Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary," Guardian, November 24, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/nov/24/jimmy-cliff-obituary.
  3. The Rough Guide says that "late in 1961" the boy, who "had already cut records for sound system operators Count Boysie and Sir Cavaliers," approached the Kong brothers to finance "Dearest Beverley," and that "Leslie Kong wanted to get into the record business anyway"; Derrick Morgan recalls Cliff cutting "Hurricane Hattie" at the first session. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 32. Bradley dates Kong's start to 1963 and quotes Cliff: "I went in and asked the three Kong brothers if they were into recording. They said they weren't, so I said, 'Well you should.'" Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 104. Katz says Kong began producing him in 1961 and dates "Hurricane Hattie" to 1962. Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary."
  4. The Rough Guide dates Kong's death to 1971. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 453. Bradley notes that Cliff, "working for Leslie Kong," got the young Bob Marley his first recording session. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 399.
  5. The Rough Guide cites "Miss Jamaica" among the celebratory records of independence and "King Of Kings" among Cliff's hits for Kong. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 3, 46. Bradley calls "King of Kings" "deliberately ambiguous." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 96.
  6. Bradley names Cliff among the singers in the Jamaica marquee, with the Blues Busters, Millie Small, Monty Morris, and Prince Buster, and quotes his complaint that Byron Lee's band "didn't have no feel for the music." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 134, 135. Katz dates the fair appearance to 1963. Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary."
  7. Wikipedia, citing a YouTube copy of the program. "Jimmy Cliff."
  8. David Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary," Guardian, November 2025, via inkl, accessed October 31, 2026, https://www.inkl.com/news/jimmy-cliff-obituary.
  9. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 96, 161.
  10. The Rough Guide: "He had come to London in the mid-1960s and Island initially attempted to sell him to the rock audience." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 385. Bradley says he had lived in the UK since 1964. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 122. Katz says Blackwell took him to London "to market him as a soul singer." Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary." The two accounts differ, so the bio gives neither.
  11. Wikipedia. "Jimmy Cliff." Katz says Hard Road to Travel "made little impact" and that "Waterfall" made him well known in Brazil after he entered a song competition in Rio. Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary."
  12. The Rough Guide lists "Wonderful World, Beautiful People," "Vietnam," and "Wild World" as "a trio of unashamedly commercial pop hits in 1969." Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 385. Bradley has "Wonderful World, Beautiful People" at number 7 on November 15, 1969. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 242. Katz dates "Vietnam" to 1969 and calls it "a favourite of Bob Dylan's." Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary." Wikipedia dates it to 1970. "Jimmy Cliff."
  13. Cliff's version, "released a few months after Stevens released the original version" in 1970, reached number eight on the UK Singles Chart. "Wild World (song)," Wikipedia, accessed October 2, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_World_(song).
  14. Bradley quotes Cliff on meeting Henzell at a recording session, where Henzell "told me he wanted me to write the music for the film." Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 285. The Rough Guide notes that Ivanhoe "Rhygin" Martin, a 1948 gunman, was the model for the part. Barrow and Dalton, Rough Guide to Reggae, 57.
  15. Wikipedia. "Jimmy Cliff."
  16. Katz says Dylan's enthusiasm for "Vietnam" led Paul Simon to record "Mother and Child Reunion" in Jamaica with the same band. Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary."
  17. Katz says he left Island for EMI after The Harder They Come and signed to Columbia in 1982. Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary." Bradley notes that Island later gave UK release to his work again, in Marley's slipstream. Bradley, This Is Reggae Music, 454.
  18. Katz says his "membership of the Nation of Islam" had begun to alienate some fans by the time he left Island for EMI, and traces his embrace of "a more traditional form of Islam" to a 1977 meeting in Senegal with Sheik Mourtada Mbaké of the Baye Fall Mourides. Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary." The name and the later remarks on religion are from Wikipedia, citing a 2013 interview. "Jimmy Cliff."
  19. Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary."
  20. Katz says the hit came from a partnership with Kool and the Gang's Ronald Bell. Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary."
  21. Wikipedia. "Jimmy Cliff."
  22. Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary."
  23. Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary."
  24. Wikipedia gives October 20, 2003. "Jimmy Cliff."
  25. Wikipedia. "Jimmy Cliff."
  26. Wikipedia; Katz names Tim Armstrong as producer. "Jimmy Cliff."; Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary."
  27. Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary."
  28. Wikipedia; Katz gives his age as eighty-one. "Jimmy Cliff."; Katz, "Jimmy Cliff Obituary."

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