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Following his passing last Monday, Jimmy Cliff’s albums and singles took over both the iTunes Top 100 Reggae Albums and Top 100 Singles Charts. Music executive Maxine Stowe told The Sunday Gleaner that this posthumous dominance is “a testament to the enduring power of both Cliff’s catalogue and his character” and represents a cultural and emotional re-immersion into his body of work.
“Fans old and new are revisiting and discovering his catalogue in real time – and the charts are reflecting that. This is not merely an algorithmic spike – it is reverence expressed through listening,” said Stowe, who has more than 40 years’ experience working as a record executive for major international labels such as Sony/Columbia and Universal/Island/Tuff Gong/Motown.
She noted that, unlike many artistes of his stature, Cliff did not benefit from a continuous major-label push after his Island Records tenure. Cliff signed to Chris Blackwell’s Island Records shortly after representing Jamaica at the World’s Fair in 1964 and later relocated to the United Kingdom. He left the company in the early ‘70s, having savoured success with songs such as Wonderful World, Beautiful People (1969), and the song that would become a post-war anthem, Vietnam.
Stowe noted that much of his sustained career momentum came through his own SunPower imprint, propelled by sheer talent, work ethic, and philosophical grounding.
Stowe worked with Cliff across several key eras of his catalogue – beginning with the Cool Runnings era in 1993, when he delivered his most globally successful single, I Can See Clearly Now.
“I later worked with him again on Higher & Higher (2012) and then Refugees (2022), while concurrently co-marketing the 50th Anniversary of The Harder They Come with Universal. Having been present across these cycles, I witnessed firsthand how Jimmy’s creative output remained consistent and inspired, even without the kind of major-label infrastructure that sustained Bob Marley posthumously,” Stowe added.
She is hopeful that a definitive posthumous compilation will be given serious consideration and eventually be brought to life.
“Just as Bob Marley & The Wailers’ Legend became a perpetual evergreen gateway into reggae, Jimmy Cliff deserves – a Jimmy Cliff Legend – developed in cooperation between his estate and Island/Universal. It should be crafted with the same level of archival respect and strategic marketing to ensure that his work continues to live in the global mainstream,” Stowe recommended.
Pointing out that Jimmy Cliff, along with the three Wailers – Bob Marley, Bunny Wailer, and Peter Tosh – are recipients of one of Jamaica’s highest national honours, the Order of Merit, Stowe emphasised that Cliff’s legacy “stands on that same plane, and the market response following his passing underscores that truth”.
“His voice, message, and artistic courage are rising again – ascending the charts with the same force with which they once overcame barriers of perception and access. It is now our collective responsibility – as industry professionals and custodians of heritage – to translate this renewed visibility into sustained global recognition of his extraordinary legacy,” said Stowe, who continues to work on legacy projects associated with her late husband, Lincoln ‘Sugar’ Minott.
She reflected briefly on working with the reggae icon on his final project.
“Working with Jimmy Cliff on Refugees was profoundly meaningful for me. In that period, he lifted me personally and professionally, offering belief and respect when I was facing heavy opposition. It should be known that Refugees contains some of Jimmy’s most powerful and classic music that the world has not yet fully discovered. His voice on that project is timeless, and I want to see this work receive the global attention and legacy status it truly deserves,” Stowe said.
Cliff was 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 was the first major commercial release to come out of Jamaica, and it 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 artiste. On an album that included Toots and the Maytals, the Slickers and Desmond Dekker, Cliff was the featured artiste 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.
After a break in the late 1970s, Cliff 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 US 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.
His other honours included induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Jamaica’s Order of Merit (OM). Cliff was invested into the Order of Distinction (Officer) in 1973. This was later upgraded to an OM in 2003. In 2019, the Jamaican government renamed Montego Bay’s popular ‘hip strip’ roadway Jimmy Cliff Boulevard. Two years later, Jamaican officials presented Cliff with an official passport in recognition of his status as a Reggae Ambassador.
He was born James Chambers in the parish of St 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.”
His popularity grew over the second half of the 1960s, and he signed with Island Records, the world’s leading reggae label. 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 artiste 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?’”
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