Jamaican reggae superstar Jimmy Cliff dies aged 81

In a post to his official social media pages, his wife Latifa Chambers said Cliff passed away after a battle with pneumonia which followed a seizure. He was 81.

“I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him. To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career. He really appreciated each and every fan for their love,” she said.

"Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace,” she added. “I will follow your wishes. I hope you all can respect our privacy during these hard times."

Born James Chambers in Saint James, Jamaica, on 30 July 1944, Cliff had his first hit song, “Hurricane Hattie”, when he was just 14 years old, after moving to Kingston with his father with the hope of breaking into the music industry.

He then went on to achieve international success by his mid-twenties, thanks to the singles “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” and “Vietnam”.

In the following years, Cliff landed further hits in which he combined pop and ska elements. 

In 1965, he moved to London at the invitation of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell. There he expanded his sound to include soul and rhythm & blues and developed more in the direction of reggae.

At the end of the 1960s, Cliff was a crowd favorite, especially in South America - after winning an award at the Brazilian song festival for his song "Waterfall". His album Wonderful World, Beautiful People became an international success and even inspired Paul Simon to take a closer look at reggae.

A starring role in the 1972 crime movie The Harder They Come, for which he also provided the soundtrack, was widely credited with helping bring Jamaican culture to the rest of the world.

Yet he initially balked at the idea; it took writer-director Perry Henzell flying to the UK, where Cliff was preparing for an extensive tour, to convince him.

“He said one sentence to me that stopped me in my tracks,” Cliff recalled in a 2022 interview with The Independent. “He said, ‘I think you’re a better actor than a singer’. I said to myself: wow! Nobody ever said that to me before, and I had always thought that! Somebody’s reading my mind! It happened like that. I cancelled the European tour that I was planning, and went to do the movie.”

Despite the film’s huge success both at home and overseas, Cliff returned to his music career after its release. “I went into it thinking, I’m going to do this piece of work with my life, and when I’m finished I’ll go back to touring,” he said. “That’s how I looked at it.”

His best-known creations include ‘You Can Get It If You Really Want’ and his famous cover of Johnny Nash’s ‘I Can See Clearly Now’, which Cliff made his own. His version of Cat Stevens’ classic, ‘Wild World’, was another example of Cliff’s incredible ability to stamp a song with his unmistakable mark.

Over a career spanning more than 50 years, Cliff released 33 albums, his latest being the 2022 record Refugees. The title track was inspired by “what’s happening all over the world” and marked his first collaboration with Wylef Jean, whom he met when the Fugees star inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

His other recordings included the Grammy Award-winning albums Cliff Hanger (1985) and Rebirth (2012); and Cliff was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.