Song 182: “Many Rivers to Cross” by Jimmy Cliff

Some 182, many rivers to cross by Jimmy Cliff. Before we begin, I have to note that Jimmy Cliff, the subject of today's episode, sadly died just a few days ago. I had actually met a most of this episode when it was announced that he died, and obviously I've had to do a bit of rewriting as a result of that.

Originally, while Cliff's song is the hook that the episode is hung on, the episode was not going to be as much about Cliff in his career as a whole, as it was a more general look at the development of Reggae, with Cliff's music just the lens to see it through. With Cliff's death, it felt a little inappropriate to do that. So this completed version now has far more about Cliff himself than I initially intended,

while still being about the development of Reggae when his popularization outside Jamaica. But this episode can still only cover a tiny fraction of the 60-year career of one of the most

“important Jamaican musicians of all time, and I should note that Cliff was an extremely”

private man, so this really does cover his career rather than his life. The episode also discusses racism, both anti-black racism from white people, and racism from black Jamaicans against people of Chinese descent.

James Chambers always knew he wanted to be a singer from a very early age.

He was brought up in mobile Jamaica by a single father, and his early years were quite brutally poor, drawing up with his father and brother in a one-room shack with no electricity and no plumbing. Though there was always the river, and as he said later, I really enjoyed that period of my life, because the river was to go to and the beach.

His first experiences of music were singing in church, and even at an early age, he seems to have had an ambivalent attitude to religion, saying, "I enjoyed the singing of

“the church, but when the preaching came on, I slept."”

His father was a very religious Christian, but over the years Cliff seemed to move between

different religious views, investigating them all intensely, and being first a Christian,

then briefly a raster, then for many years a follower of the nation of Islam. Before finally deciding that, as he put it, the religious thing was one of the many doors I went through, it was just another classroom I studied, and graduated now, and saying, "Now I believe in science." But when he was seven, he had to move for the first time in what would become a rather

peripatetic life. As he went for a while to live with his grandmother while his father rebuilt their shack after Hurricane Charlie hit, while there he had a couple of experiences that would affect this outlook for the rest of his life.

“For the first time he experienced colivism, the cousins he was living with were all”

lighter-skinned than him, and his grandmother, who was also dark-skinned, tried to instill in him a black-is-beautiful attitude to counteract the negative messages he was getting from others.

His grandmother also became the first person to encourage him to sing.

He would climb a tree and sing as loudly as he could, and if the neighbors complained she would tell them off, saying that God had given him a talent, and he was obviously going to use it. While he was only with this grandmother, a relatively short period of time before returning to his father, these lessons of hers seemed to have given him the kind of confidence that

most people couldn't dream of, something that would make a huge difference in his chosen career. I'm returning to his father's home, he started to occasionally sneak into a nearby tavern, not to drink alcohol, but to listen to music. Young James's father was a strict pentacostal, who thought the tall secular music was

the work of the devil, but James disagreed. And the tavern had one of the sound systems that were becoming popular in Jamaica, playing mostly Cuban and Latin American music, like Son and Mumba. He would also sneak off to listen to music with the friend who had a radio, and go to another bar where they had a cute box.

It listened to the songs and learned them, then offered to sing them for the customers for a glass of soda. He was particularly impressed with New Orleans R&B, like Fat Storm and Owen, from Fassalong here, whose music had many of the same rhythms that were used in the Cuban music he heard on the sound system.

And in the clips or in mentor, made by local Jamaican musicians.

as Bobby DARREN, Samcock and Little Richard.

“After more or though, it was Fat Storm and Owen who was his favorite, and his first performances”

and talent shows it somewhere comes put on by the 4-H club, an organization that provides hands-on education for verbal children. We're all of Fat Storm and Owen's songs. Already a budding professional even as a child, he took on a stage name for these, saying later, "I was born in the mountainous part of Summaton, up in the cliffs where I could

see all of Summaton, so I thought, "Why don't I use cliff because it's the height?" And then my father used to call me Jimmy when I was a good boy, and James when I was a bad boy, so why not use Jimmy? James Chambers became Jimmy Cliff, and that would be the name he would use for the rest of his career.

“He knew even as a child he wanted to become a professional singer, but had little idea”

how to go about it, and the people around him were no help. When he asked the teacher how one motor-songy was told, "Well, you just write one." He did, though the songy wrote, "I'll go wooing, is seemingly lost a time, but he kept trying to perform anywhere he could."

His first major performance was at the National Achievement Day 1 by 4H, where children

from all over the country were gathered to take part in competitions. He entered the competition and sang the Fat Stomeno song "Be My Guest" by Kapala. At least that's the story told in the one biography of Cliff, David Katzer's very good book on him, but Cliff was probably misremembering the song.

“The biography says this happened when it was 14, so that would place it between July”

1958 and July 1959, but Dominoa only recorded the track in August 1959. I say he probably misremembered the song rather than misremembering the year, because we also know that when he was 14, Cliff moved away from the countryside to Kingston, in order to pursue his education. Cliff's teachers had picked him out as especially bright, and there were no opportunities

where he grew up, and so he moved to the big city. His father had hoped for him to maybe become a doctor for a lawyer, but when asked if he'd rather have extra tuition money so he could go into the professions, or have the money spent on a radio for him to take with him. Cliff chose the radio, and started training to become an electrician instead, while living

temporarily with various of his father's acquaintances, who put him up as a favour. He attended night school at Kingston Technical College, but soon he heard a record that would change his life forever. What made that so special wasn't the record itself, but that Cliff found out that the singer, Lover Lake, was Jamaican and lived in Kingston.

Suddenly the idea of being a rhythm and blue star was something that could happen to him, not just to people in another country. He entered a talent contest which gave cash prizes to the winner, but also led to opportunities to get broadcast on the radio. Unfortunately what he hadn't realized was that the winner was chosen by audience vote,

which meant in fact this, as this usually means for that kind of event, that the winners who ever had got most friends to buy tickets. As Cliff was relatively new to the city, and the show was on the other side of town from where he was staying, he hadn't packed the audience and came dead last. However, the talent show moved to different theatres each week, and he tried again closer

to home, full-warned us to what to expect, and on his second attempt performed a version

of Owen Gray's "Sinners Weak". "Sinners gonna be hand-mo" "Sinners gonna be hand-mo" "Cos it's gonna be a great hand-mo" "I want to go and tell your friend" "I want to go and tell your friend"

This time he won, enough money to buy himself a new pair of trousers, and give some money

“to the cousin he was staying with at the time.”

Franky Benito, the pianist in the talent show's band, encouraged Cliff to try to record,

but at first he couldn't get anyone interested.

At the time, most of the record production in Jamaica was, as we discussed in the episode on my Bowlolly pub, done by the DJs who ran the popular sound systems, making records primarily for themselves to play. Cliff tried all the major sound system names like Duke Reed and Cox and Dodd, but none of them were interested.

Eventually he went to the manager of a smaller sound system, Camp Boise de Monac, and Boise agreed to record a little Richard Knuckoff Cliff had been entitled Daisy Got Me Crazy. Unfortunately Boise did not agree to pay Cliff what he thought he deserved, an experience later shared by Ivan, Cliff's character in the heart that they come.

“The deal Cliff was offered was somewhat worse than Ivan's though.”

Boise only offered him a shilling for his bus fare, and never released the record, only

playing it on his own sound system. Cliff kept trying though, for a short while he was in a duo called Cliff and Smith with another singer Keith Smith. The Smith moved on reliable, and Cliff was soon on his own again. His next recording was marginally more successful in his failed attempt at Camp Boise.

Recording with Sir Cavalier, I knew produce who'd started his own label, "Haitone." He finally got to release a single, an original titled "I'm Sorry." , that track was not as successful, though it did also get licensed to bluebeat records in the UK. But Cliff was now officially professional recording artist.

“Although the amount of money he'd made for it was minimal, he got 15 pounds, enough”

to buy a pair of trousers, a hat, and a chicken to eat. That was enough, though, for him to become convinced that he could make a living as a singer. He quit technical school, and then doing so for a while badly with his father, and started taking odd jobs, living a hand to mouth while trying to become a success as a performer. But his single hadn't been successful enough for Sir Cavalier to want to make any more

of records with him. He tried every record producer in Kingston, and none of them saw his potential. But that didn't stop Cliff. One thing that comes through over and over again in Cliff's story is that he was just not someone who would give up, no matter how impossible things seemed, so he made his own

record producer. At the time there was a shopping Kingston called Bevelies, owned by three Chinese Jamaican brothers whose surname was Kong. All the accounts seem to differ as to what the shop actually sold. According to some sources it was a restaurant and ice cream parlor with a real estate

business in the back. While all of the sales are jumbled store selling cosmetics, ice cream and records. Whatever it sold, Cliff decided that if he were to song called Deavist Bevelie, that might persuade the converter to record him. He came to the shop one night, just as it was closing up, and made his pitch to the brothers.

Two of them pointed out reasonably enough that they weren't in the record business and didn't know anything at all about record production. The Leslie Kong was interested and asked Cliff to sing. After Cliff finished singing a song, Fats and Sessel Kong both laughed, but Leslie decided that Cliff had a great voice, and that he was going to become a Macco producer.

Without the time, Kong didn't completely trust his own instincts, so he asked for a second

opinion. He told Cliff that they would make a record together, but only if Cliff could get Derek Morgan to endorse him. Cliff Morgan was in a quaintance of cliffs, and someone who had followed a somewhat similar path a year or two before.

Both would rather be fans, though Morgan imitated Little Richard while Cliff preferred Fats Domino. And Morgan had started out by winning the same talent contest, via John's opportunity hour, that Cliff had tried and failed to win. But by this point he was the biggest star in Jamaica.

At 1.960, apparently the entire top 7 in the world, and he was the only one who had been in the world.

“At 1.960, apparently the entire top 7 in the Jamaican pop charts was made up of Morgan's”

records. Kong had two different aims in mind with asking for Morgan's endorsement.

The first was to check that somebody with any kind of experience in the business thought

that Cliff had the chance of success. A reasonable enough question given that Kong was a complete outsider. And the second was to hopefully get Morgan to be called for him as well, even if Jimmy

“Cliff didn't make a hit record, Derek Morgan probably would, and that would justify Kong's”

investment. Morgan thought Cliff was very talented, but he also thought that Davis Beverly, while a good song, was too slow to be commercial, so Cliff came up with another song of a cane-hattie, a bouncy track with the rather one pleasant-level message, that if his girlfriend didn't treat him right, he'd be as destructive as a recent hurricane.

With Morgan's endorsement, Kong set up two recording sessions.

“Morgan suggested the back of musicians, Drumbay goes all stars, the group of session musicians”

who are Kingston's equivalent to the wrecking crew are Motans' funfathers. These musicians would change over the years and eventually evolve into the scatelites, though by that time without the eponymous drum Bego.

The sessions all featured multiple singers, had the first session Cliff recorded Davis

Beverly, Morgan recorded she's gone. and Evan Monti Marves, a friend of Morgan, who was another veteran of beer, Jones' opportunity hour, and who would later go on to become the lead singer of the Scatelite, recorded Cinderella. Cinderella does cry, Cinderella does cry, Cinderella does cry, Cinderella does cry, Cinderella

does cry, Cinderella does cry, Cinderella does cry, Cinderella does cry, Cinderella does cry, the same track might be released in different mixes under different titles and backing tracks would often be reused from other singers. Because of this, and the way those tracks have often since been collected onto compilations in mother haphazard manners, it's possible that sometimes I'll be using the wrong version

of a song without realising it. In this case, though, that's definitely the version recorded at this session.

At the second session, Kong organised Cliff recorded Hurricane Hattie, a wing grey recorded

with Darling Patricia. Morgan recorded B still, a song in which he, in part, mocked grey and claimed to be better than him.

hit, but I'm not sure that what I just played you is the original version of B still.

“That copy is from the 1962 UK issue of the song, and the production is credited to”

Prince Buster. I haven't been able to track down a copy that I can definitively source to the 1961 Jamaican issue, and this would normally not matter too much, I'd assume that it was the same recording license to a different producer, given it was less than a year later. But in this case, I'm not at all sure that any licensing agreement between Prince Buster

and LSD Kong would or could have existed, so it may well be a remade version. You see, many of the people in this story, including at points, Cliff himself, have held to black supremacist viewpoints.

Being either master fairians at the time when most masters believe that all black people

were superior to white, or as in the case of Prince Buster, and of Cliff for much of the 70s, they're not yet at this point in time, members of the nation of Islam, a religion

“which has a lot of the same origins as Resterfaray, both being inspired by the work of”

Marcus Garvey, and is essentially to mainstream Islam, what Resterfaray is to mainstream Christianity. Now, the nation of Islam holds, or certainly held at the time, the view of the tall white people of Western European descent, and also most Jewish people, are literal devils, created by an evil black scientist named Jacob, an incapable of doing good.

Now, personally, I think there was some problems with that belief, but then, as a white person of Western European descent myself, I'm hardly likely to say otherwise, am I? That said, it is at least understandable why black people in mid-20th century America, where eggs slaves were still in living memory for many, or in Jamaica, still a colony of the British Empire until the 60s, might draw such a conclusion, even if one thinks

it's perhaps a tad harsh, the official document of the nation holds that this is only true of those groups, and that Asian people, for example, count as black. Buster, on the other hand, seems to have held to a definition in which people of Chinese descent like Kong counted as white. I've seen various discussions of the racial dynamics of colonialism in Jamaica, and the

implicit and explicit racial hierarchies held at the time.

“Remember that at this point, Jamaica was still a colony of the British Empire, and how”

that fed into Buster's ideas about Chinese people, and, as a British white man, there was simply nothing sensible I could say about that. But what I will say is that Buster's response was to release a string of virulently anti-Chinese records, attacking his associate Morgan, from recording with the Chinese man, and accusing them of stealing his work.

I will not be accepting those here, but what I will say is that Jimmy Cliff, even at a point where he too was a member of the nation of Islam and held similar racial views, said that what really upset Buster and the other producers of the time was that Leslie Kong actually paid the artist to record before him a decent amount of money, while none of the others did.

Leslie Kong was not the only Jamaican of Chinese descent to be making a mark in the early days of scar. Another, and one who had entered Jimmy Cliff's life through the same process that led to Jamaican independence, was the base player Byron Lee, leader of the Dragon Ares, a band

so prominent that they appeared in the first James Bond film the next year, 1962, which

was also the year after Jamaican independence. Lee, though, didn't start out as a scar musician, and his move into the genre, was as the result of one of the very politicians who was responsible for shaping Jamaican new founded independence. We've talked a bit about Alan Lomax in this series, but Lomax was only one of a number

of ethnomusicologists educated in the US, who devoted their time to going around the world recording usually black, usually poor musicians in the name of anthropology. Most of them inspired directly or indirectly by Lomax's father, John. Many of these people had impact on the world of scholarship or music, very few, helped to popularise and put a jump of music and change world culture.

And even fewer did so as essentially their side hustle while helping to found a country, possibly the only one who did was Edward Seaga, the man who had become Jamaica's fifth prime minister in 1980. Seaga started out as a Harvard educated anthropologist, and after graduating in 1952, he got a job with the University of the West Indies.

Seaga seems to have had a wide-ranging intellectual interest, and his early publications include one unfaith healing published in "Evolve Places" at Paris Psychology Journal.

of field recordings of Jamaican folk music for folk ways records. That experience had convinced him that there was commercial potential in Jamaican music, and he had soon started up his own record label, West Indies records limited, and it produced records like Hicks and Wilson's "Oh Manio", which, as we heard in the episode of My Boy

“Lullipop, had been an important precursor to Scar.”

Seaga was one of the most important mechop producers of the early Jamaican era, but

by 1959 he had started yet another career. He had been appointed to the Legislative Council, the then-oper-house of the Jamaican Parliament, as a member of the Jamaica Labour Party, which despite his name is actually the more about wing of the two major parties on the island. Seaga would gone to become the country's prime minister in the 80s, as part of the board

right-wood shift that saw a factor in Reagan come to power around the same time, and was already a rising star.

“When he was appointed he was only 29, and the youngest person ever to serve in the”

role, and he helped draft the constitution which Jamaica took on when it became independent

in 1962. As part of Jamaica becoming independent, Seaga was elected as an MP, and his constituency happened to be the one in which Jimmy Cliff lived, a constituency in West Kingston, a ghetto weaver. As part of the celebrations of the upcoming independence, Seaga, who had ambitions towards becoming minister of culture, wanted to organise a tour celebrating Jamaica's own

indigenous music, and especially the music that came from his own constituency.

“So he got a 10-day celebratory tour organised, which would feature among others Cliff,”

Demic Morgan, and the Toaster Count Prince Miller, but he also wanted the tour to appeal to the more respectable middle class, as well as to the people from the ghettos. So as the backing band he got by and Lee in his dragon ass, a band who had long been associated with Seaga. Lee was a far-move-up market musician the most of the square musicians. While Scar was a music associated with the ghettos, and the gangsters known as Woodboy's,

Lee was someone who had been playing for the upper middle classes, mostly covers her American soft pop records. But from about 1961, Seaga had been pushing in to make Scar records, like "Mash Mr. Lee." Lee and Seaga would remain associates for some time, and in 1964 Lee was to buy Seaga's

WIRWL studio and turn it into dynamic sounds. Lee would become the first to make

a musician to become a millionaire, and he was resented by many of the same musicians and producers who resented Kung. Partly because of his race, and partly because he was seen as an outsider who was sloming it when he worked in Scar, and of course, those two things were very intertwined. After Cliff's first hit record, his next few were comparative failures, but he continued working with Leslie Kong at the new Beverly's record label.

He released several singles himself, like "I'm free," a song which he was splitting up with an abusive partner, as a metaphor for Jamaica's independence. "I'm free, man." "Leave me in a free country." "No, no, no, baby." "You know, don't want me." But as well as singing for the label, Cliff and Morgan both worked as a range of

biggest contributions to music in this period. A world called Desmond Dakers, who

“like Cliff had been turned down by both Duke Reed and Cox and Dodd, came to audition for the label.”

Cliff and Morgan thought he was impressive, but not quite there yet. They mentored the young man, and helped him come up with stronger material, and after several auditions for them, he eventually

went into this studio to record his first single with Cliff and Morgan supervise in the musicians.

Release them to the name Desmond Dekka, on a year mother and father made number one in Jamaica. "Come all the night, you ain't been belong home on the land."

“Dekka would become the biggest star of the 60s in Jamaica, with more than 20 Jamaican number”

ones, and he would become the first Jamaican musician to have big hits in Britain, with a

single 007, making the British top 20 in 1967.

And of course, as you can number one single is Realite in 1968. While Dekka was still polishing his act, working with Cliff and Morgan to get to a point where he could be signed, he talked with the colleague who also wanted to be a singer.

“The colleague, like Dekka, had been turned down by every record for Duke so in Kingston.”

He'd even been turned down by Kong, but Dekka explained him that Kong wasn't the

person he really needed to see at Beverly Records. He wanted to go and speak to Jimmy Cliff and Derek Morgan. As Cliff told the story, Dekka's colleague came into the studio while Cliff was playing piano, and said that what he was playing sounded good. Cliff said, "I knew if he could just walk in straight away and knew it sounded good. It had to be somebody really sensitive, what had a good sense of music." He said he came to audition and told me about Desmond and sang some of his songs,

and among the songs that he sang, three of them I chose, and then when DEMICCOM he liked those as well, which was one cup of coffee, judge-not, and terror. And at Lestie Kong's next session he recorded those songs, and that was the start of Bob Marley. Mali's work for Beverly's as a solo artist was not a success, and he soon left the label to form a group, and will be hearing more about that in future episodes. One track that Cliff himself

recorded in 1963 was appointed towards the future of Jamaican music, as well as being Cliff's biggest hit after Hattie. King of Kings was the idea of a neighbour of Derek Morgan's corny green, who came up with the basic concept and worked on the song with Morgan. They decided that Cliff rather than Morgan should sing it, and took the hard finished song to Cliff, who completed it. That song was one of the earliest records to explicitly reference Vastofarianism.

Though as Vastors were at that time in Jamaica, very much had despised underclass,

it does so by means of metaphor, though the metaphor in question is not a very subtle one.

“The lyrics are about the lion defeating all the other animals and proclaiming itself to be King of Kings.”

But in the context of Jamaica at that time, this would be very obviously a reference to Emperor Haily Celassi, the Emperor of Ethiopia, who was believed by the Vastofarian, much to Celassi's own movement, to be the reincarnation of Jesus, and whose official titles included "Conquering Line" of the tribe of Judah, and King of Kings of Ethiopia, Lord of Lords, and elect of God. The song was popular, but not with everyone.

Prince Buster in particular was incensed by the track, both because it was produced by his hated rival Lesley Kong, and because, as a member of the nation of Islam, he preferred his black supremacist new religious movement, inspired by Marcus Garvey, to be in a slightly different

“flavor from the Vastors version. He produced an answer song, The Lion Wars,”

pointing out the cliff's record was a lie, because it says the lion says he's the King of Kings, but lions can't actually speak. So therefore, Ella must be the real King of Kings. Buster's distaste for people of Chinese descent didn't stop him from working with violently himself though, when an opportunity came for Buster and Clif to tour the east coast of the O.S. backed by the dragon as. This was the work of Edward Seaga, who was by this point the Minister

for Development and Welfare, and of our detergent at Atlantic Records. The two of them worked out an arrangement to present the best scar musicians, by which, in fact, this they meant musicians with connections to the Jamaica Labour Party,

“had the world's fair and New York that year, and Buster was both one of the undoubted”

grades of early scar, and someone whose connections to the JLP were so close that they even provided his name. Buster was shot for Buster Mante, his middle name, which was given in by his parents

in tribute to Alexander Buster Mante, the lead with the JLP, and at this point the first Prime Minister

of an independent Jamaica. Seaga was trying to work on getting more trade between Jamaica and the O.S., and creating greater cultural ties between the two countries. And Ertugun was excited at an entire new country full of musicians who had been inspired by the same music he'd been releasing. The plumb was to have the Jamaican musicians appear at the world's fair, have Atlantic release the cream of recent Jamaican scar singles in the U.S., have a brief

tour of major markets on the East Coast, and have a publicity blitz, including a feature on the cover of Variety. This would be great publicity for the new nation, great exposure for the musicians, and make a lot of money for everyone concerned. The people sent over were cliff, byronly in the Dragonaires, Buster, Mante Morris, Teddy Charmers and various dancers, and by all accounts the shows were a great success. Unfortunately, the vest of the plan didn't work out

very well financially. American mass culture only really has room in it for one exciting new father and sound that's a great pop sensation of the moment at any one time. If K-pop is the latest thing, then Ukrainian progressive metal is unlikely to get a foothold. And in April 1964, there was definitely an exciting new father and sound already taking that place in the American musical ecosystem. The singles released by Atlantic flopped, and a planned TV documentary on

scar was cancelled. The journey to America had a big effect on cliff, though. It was his first

time out of Jamaica and he was being treated as a star, Fins Buster, who had been to the U.S. before, even introduced cliff to his acquaintance Muhammad Ali, which was the start of cliff zone interest in the nation of Islam. Cliff spent the next year trying to break the American market, including participating in the album The Real Jamaica Scar, produced by Karl Davis and Curtis Mayfield for American release.

Cliff worked though, and Cliff eventually decided to take up a different offer. Chris Blackwell, the head of island records, had seen Cliff performing in America and was already aware of his work because Leslie Kong was a minor part of an island. He'd asked Cliff

more inviting than Britain. But as the doors to American success seemed to be closed,

“Cliff took up Blackwell's suggestion. While by 1965, island was already pivoting from being a”

scar label to becoming a rock one, and Blackwell had already started to set up Trojan Records for scarvy issues so he could keep rock and scar very separate. Blackwell was convinced that Cliff was someone he could market in Britain. Scar was becoming popular with the mud subculture in Britain at the time, but other than records that were seen as essentially novelty hits like my boy Lollipop, it wasn't breaking out into the mainstream. But other music looked by the muds, like soul,

was, and Blackwell saw enough similarities between soul and scar, and connections between both

“and the white arm and b-bans were becoming big in the wake of the rolling stones and the animals.”

The T30 did at least use Jamaican scar musicians to make British hits. So, for example, Blackwell had head-on to discuss singer-songwriter Jackie Edwards, who had had several big ballad hits in Jamaica. In 1965, Edwards cut the song keep on running as an album track. It was soul, not scar, but it clearly had the influence of scar in its groove. Blackwell then got his new signing, the Spencer Davis group, with their young lead singer-steve

Windwood, to record their own version of the song, which he licensed at Fontana Records and which became a UK number one hit. According to Blackwell's autobiography, Jimmy Cliff was in the studio for that recording, and it's him doing the whoops and hullers throughout the track. There was him just heard shout, "Hey, come on!" Cliff did not like the UK, he didn't like the weather, but also there was

a level of open, virulent racism that shocked him. In 1964, for example, there had been a shock election when in one seat, when a conservative had beaten the incumbent Labour MP on a slogan

“of, "If you want to," and here the slogan used the N word, "For a neighbour, for labour," some”

sources say it was "vote limp for law Labour." The MP in question had, of course, denied that there was

anything racist in that sentiment. Cliff himself was evicted from the first bedset he moved into

when he came to the UK, which he had booked through a Latin agency, when the landlord discovered he was black. Such discrimination was legal in written until 1968. But he whilst despite this, eager to work with Blackwell who took over his career. Cliff's first release for Ireland, licensed through Fontana like the Spencer Davis group record, was about called Pride and Passion. That track was produced by Jimmy Miller, who we've already heard about in the sympathy for the

devil episodes, as he would go on to produce a lot of the stone's most successful work. Cliff also recorded a duet with Millie Small, "Hey boy, hey girl!" "You sure look fine!" Cliff's early British recordings were not very successful, but Blackwell knew that what was needed was for him to build a reputation as a live act. Blackwell had Cliff performed back by a white soul group called the Phil Wayne Ramband, who changed their name

when backing Cliff to the new generation, and they toured all the mud soul that used for our Britain,

performing covers of Staxon Motown songs like Knock On Wood and Uptight. The first gig was at

lunged on boardry, Julie Driscoll, and Rod Stewart. As well as touring on their own, Blackwell

“got them support slots on a tour with the who and the Spencer Davis group, and Cliff apparently”

made a big impression on Pete Townsend. While Cliff was not yet a success, he was convinced he would be. Everything he had done in his career up to that point had been achieved by sheer determination and self-belief. Phil Wayneman would later recall Cliff saying to him, "Phil, it's all out there, all you've got to do is go out and get it." The new generation didn't remain Cliff's backing band for long, though. The group rubbed Cliff up the wrong way, not least, because of playing

racist francs like sticking a black dolled found in Cliff's bed, and soon blackwell had found

“them under the band. This one was called the Shake Down Sound, and initially featured Sean Jenkins”

On drums, Kevin Gammond on guitar, Least Arm on bass, and Virgin Allen on keyboards. This group would not back-cliff on records because Jimmy Miller was not impressed by them, but Cliff kept releasing singles. Given take made disc magazines top 50 charts, but just as it was rising higher, the magazine cut their chart to just the top 30,

which the record never hit.

Another single meanwhile, had as it's be signed about it called Hard Road to Travel,

“which would later become one of Cliff's reggae classics, but at this point showed how influenced”

Cliff had been by Sam Cook. That was the title track of Cliff's first album, and the Shake Down Sound did get to play on one track on that record. A cover version of a white-to-shade of pale showcasing Allen's organ playing. The group went through some line-up changes over the year so that they backed Cliff.

First to leave was Kevin Gammond, who went off to join the band of joy with Robert Plants and John

Bunham. He was replaced by a guitarist friend of Allen's Mick Walsh. Surely before they parted ways with Cliff, Jenkins also left, and was replaced by an old bandmate of Walsh, they'll riff in. But Allen records decided that it would make more sense for Cliff to be backed by another band on the label, Winder K-Frog, and so he parted ways with the Shake Down Sound. Walsh Allen and Griffin continued to play as the Shake Down Sound for a while,

replacing Star with Peter Vend Wat and adding vocalist Stan Tippins. After the replaced Tippins with Ian Hunter in 1969, they became "Mot the Hupel".

Cliff's records were getting nowhere. He released several more singles, produced first by

Miller and then by Muff Windward, formerly at the Spencer Davis group. But none of them had any kind of success. He was getting miserable, and he looked very much like his career was at an end. But then his look changed. Cliff was friendly with the minor psychopath duo Novana. Not the same band as the much more famous 90s band of the same name. This was the duo of Patrick Campbell Lyons and Alex Pervopoulos, who had had a minor hit with the single Rainbow Chaser.

Novana had written a song called "Waterfall" and got cliff to sing on the demo.

next single, for the Rio International Song Festival. It was accepted as the entry for Jamaica,

“much to know about Anna's amusement. Campbell Lyons, saying later, "I had to love to myself,”

something written by a Greek and an Irishman representing the land of Reggae." Cliff didn't win, as he was up against stiff competition, with Paul and Kevin represent in Canada, Francois R. D. France, and the righteous brothers of America. But the tracks took a chord in Brazil, where it seemed to resemble the new Tropicalia sound that was becoming popular. He went to number two on the charts over there, and Cliff spent a couple of months in the country,

and told other South American nations as well. While he was there, he put out his second album,

Jimmy Cliff in Brazil. A patchwork job consisting of half of hard road to travel, "Waterfall", a handful of covers of contemporary Brazilian hits, with new English

“lyrics by Paul Anke and Sami Khan, because while he was in South America,”

and one new song, "Hey, Mr. Yesterday." [music] After his time in South America, he returned to Jamaica, where in his absence, the music industry had gone through two big changes. It's very hard to find a dividing line between Scar and Rocksteady, and between Rocksteady, and the later Reggae. There's a huge overlap between all three.

They have a number of stylistic similarities, and a lot of the same musicians made records in all three

styles. But basically Rocksteady bore the same relationship to the soul records coming from Motown

and the Impressions. As Scar had to 50s New Orleans R&B. There was the same stress on the offbeat's

“Scar. But while the guitar and horns would still emphasize the second and fourth beat,”

now the kick drum shifted away from the backbeat, towards playing on the first and third beat, and soon the kick drum would only play on the third beat, dropping the first all together. What became known as the "One Drop" rhythm. The music tended to be slower, and came about because sound system DJs started to notice that some people wanted slower music to dance to, than the rather more frenetic scar, and would complain that they missed having slower records

like those by Johnny A's. The DJs started playing slower soul balance as the nights drew one and people got tired, and soon the musicians started to produce similar material. The name Rocksteady actually came from a dance, initially popularized by a dance and named Busby, a couple of years before the genre itself took hold. And there were various records pointed to us the first Rocksteady record.

Though, as we always see in this podcast, there's no first anything.

Like Baby I Love You by Carl Dawkins, or Take It Easy by Hopeton Lewis, which refers in its lyrics to "Doing the Rocksteady." ♪ Take It Easy, Take It Easy, Take It Easy, Take It Easy, No need to hurry. ♪ No stepping, no standing, or bumping, or pouring, I want. ♪ But the record that really popularized the new genre, and the name for it,

was Rocksteady by Elton Ellis, a hit in 1966. (music playing) ♪ Better get ready, come to Rocksteady. ♪ ♪ You got to do this to me then, if you're ready. ♪ ♪ You got to do it, just lie on the frame, if you don't know. ♪

♪ There were other differences between Rocksteady and Scar. ♪ ♪ There was a greater emphasis on electric organ rather than piano. ♪ ♪ More prominent guitar, generally less use of horns, and often more vocal harmonies, ♪ ♪ with the impressions being a particular influence, as on Queen Majesty by the Techniques, ♪ ♪ A cover of the Impressions, Minstrel and Queen. ♪

♪ Queen Majesty's Feel, we ask for you to feel. ♪ ♪ So much of love and love to speak to you. ♪

The subject matter of the records was also initially mostly inspired by the popular end of soul.

“The Impressions and Motown, especially Smokey Robinson's work.”

But increasingly as the '60s went on, Rocksteady records also started dealing with social issues, as on Prince Buster's classic Junched Red, in which with the help of an unpredited Lee scratch Perry, Buster dished out policemen to the vooday gangsters who were becoming an increasing problem in Jamaica. ♪ ♪ My name is Judge 100 years, some people call me, but it's red. ♪

♪ Oh, I am coming, it's a warfare. ♪ ♪ Try hard to root white, but shouldn't lock people. ♪ (music playing)

“But by mid-1968, Rocksteady had moved on to become something else again.”

The guitars became steadily more peccosive. The bass became more prominent and stuck more to the rhythm. The arrangements became sparser. The lyrics often became more political. The level of reverb used start to increase, a new bubbling electrical organ sound effect in, known as an organ shuffle,

and at least at first the music started to speed up again. There are a handful of records

that get pointed to as the first of this new style. Nana, goat by Larry Marshall. ♪ ♪ Oh, I am coming, it's a pleasure to be here. ♪ ♪ Oh, I am coming, it's a pleasure to be here. ♪

“♪ Oh, I am coming, it's a pleasure to be here. ♪”

♪ ♪ ♪ Search it's going long. ♪ ♪ Jump before you. ♪ ♪ Another hour before you. ♪ ♪ Three years ago. ♪

♪ No more. ♪ ♪ People funny boy by Lee Scratch Perry. ♪ And a handful of others. But the new music didn't get its popular name until Tuts and the Metals released, "Do The Reggae". ♪ I want you to make it ♪

♪ We do ♪ We're in Rock Study, the bass that had a primarily melodic function. With Reggae, the organ became the primary melody instrument, with the guitars adding a scratching percussive sound and the bass snapping to the beat. While in the early years of scar, the musician too late became known as the "Scatelites" had been the go-to session musicians, but the time

Rock Study transitioned into Reggae, the standard session group featured former "Scatelite" Tommy McCock on saxophone, Jackie Jackson on bass, "Gladi Anderson on piano".

Either Winston Wright, the awfulest bit-foot or never-hands on organ. Hooks brown,

Ducky Bryan, Manipop, all-in-tate on guitar, and Winston Brennan, drummer, or Paul Douglas on drums. This group was initially known as Beverly's All Stars, as Leslie Kong was the one who most regularly used them. But as were the producers kept turning to this standard group of musicians, they became "Gladi's All Stars", and it was this group of musicians that Cliff used when recording his next album, which was titled "Just Jimmy Cliff on its initial release",

but which later became better known by its American title, "Wonderful World Beautiful People".

♪ There is a secret, but nobody can leave me ♪

“That track, released as a single in 1969 on Trojan Records, Chris Blackwell's Scar and Reggae Label,”

became Cliff's first UK top-turn hit. The album it came from had Leslie Kong as the

credit of producer, and most of the basic tracks were recorded at Dynamics Sound in Jamaica, but the big difference came from overdubs of Adunnel Square. Chris Blackwell had become convinced that despite the occasional one-off successive Reggae singles like Desmond Dacca's Israelites, or the upset as return of Django, Reggae would not have a serious commercial presence in Written Over America in its raw form. But if it could become popular with a little sweetening,

it'd fit here as a tune to Anglo-American pop music. For that reason, he got Cliff to bring

“the multi-tracks to America, and there they added final overdubs, mostly strings and vocals,”

in American studios with American musicians. It paid off with the success of the wonderful world beautiful people single, and while the album didn't chart, it was heard by all the right people. I've read in several books on Reggae that Bob Dylan said that Cliff's Vietnam was the best protest song ever. Though, I've been unable to find the original source for this quote, and there are many fabricated quotes from Dylan.

I'm Paul Simon was impressed enough by that track, but he would travel to Kingston in 1971 to record with the same session musicians for his track, Mother of Inchallery Union. Though the piano

“was later over the by-reaching crew player Larry Necktall.”

But the track that became Cliff's most well-loved song was actually the one track that was not recorded in Kingston at all. Chris Blackwell had wanted one extra song to band out the album, and Cliff had dug out something with his half-written years earlier, about his continued struggles

for success that he could never achieve, about his loneliness in Britain, and about how he was

losing hope. He described his thoughts about the song later, saying, "When I came to the UK I was still in my teens, I came full of vigor, I'm going to make it, I'm going to be up there with the Beatles and the Stones, and it wasn't really going like that, I was touring clubs not breaking through, I was struggling with work, life, my identity, I couldn't find my place, frustration fueled the song." He finished the song on the way to the studio,

where it was recorded with most of the muscle-sholes studio band backing him, and then it's final form at least, it seems to have something of a debt to quite a shade of pale, but it's a much more aching soulful song than that one.

With the success of wonderful world beautiful people, Cliff had now finally got part of the

way to the success that had eluded him. He had a UK top 10 hit, and a US top 31. He followed that up with another single, a version of Cat Stevens's Wild World. I should note here that while he changed his name to your surface lamb, and for a long time he refused to use his stage name Cat Stevens, his lamb now uses that stage name again for his music, and so I'll be using it here. This was actually produced by Stevens himself. While the song is one of Stevens's most

popular, he wasn't keen on it, and only released it as an album track. According to Cliff, I went to the publisher and he played me this demo of Wild World, and he told me that Steve had written it but he didn't like it. I loved it right away, so he called up Steve and put me on the phone to him. Steve asked me what my key was, I said, and he started playing guitar

and I went in the following day, help put on the backing voices with Thomas Troy,

“and then it was time for me to put my voice on, and Steve directed me to sing the high notes on”

the song. He was a really good producer, and it was a big hit. That became another UK top 10 hit for him, and rather surprisingly, given that some of his most well-known songs only came out afterwards, it would be as last. This is partly because of what happened with his next single, you can get it if you really want, a song which might well be considered cliff's theme song as it summed up his attitudes to success in life,

in a much more of a beat-by given his recent success than in many of us to cross. While that is one of Cliff's most famous recordings, the single itself wasn't a hit.

“Just as Cliff had had the hit with one of Kat Stevens's most famous songs,”

now Desmond Decker, who had been given his first big, great-bye cliff, had the hit with

you can get it if you really want. His cover version released almost simultaneously with Cliff's original, made number two in the UK. [Music] Further surprisingly, Cliff's planned next island album, which would have featured both you can get it if you really want, and wild-world, was shelved after it was recorded in Jamaica.

Instead, Cliff travelled to muscle shells to record a totally different album.

“As he said later, after wonderful world, they started giving respect ability to reggae in”

England, so that was good. But by then, all the blues and album be the tab in doing while playing clubs in England had become a part of me, so I welcomed the opportunity to record in muscle shells, and it was a very positive experience, and other cycle was really different from the reggae things that I was doing. Lots of people thought that it was about move because I was doing good with reggae, so by changing going to a different kind of thing. That album, and other cycle,

seems like another attempt to capture the US market, though again it was unsuccessful. Despite featuring one of Cliff's most popular tracks, sitting in limbo. Sitting here in limbo, but I know it won't be long. Sitting here in limbo, like a bird without a song. [music]

But he from while he was recording that, Cliff had already made the connection that would make him known in the US, though it would take longer than he expected to come to fruition. While recording is abandoned album, Cliff had been visited in the studio by a white Jamaican

filmmaker, Perry Hansel. Hansel was intended to make what would be the first ever film made in

Jamaica by Jamaicans. The initial plan was to make a biopic of the notorious criminal Vincent Ivan Ho Martin, known as Regan. Regan was a bank robber turned sprinkler, who had killed three people and wounded four more than the 1940s. Before being shut himself by the police, despite being a truly terrible human being, he had become something of a folk hero in Jamaica. And in the late 60s and early 70s there had been a spated films about such criminal culture heroes,

like Ned Kelly, the film starring Mick Jagger that we talked about in the sympathy for the devil episodes. And most famously and successfully, Bonnie and Clyde, the film's some credit for starting the whole New Hollywood style that dominated the late 60s and 70s.

In Cliff's words, one where I look like a winner and the other where I look like a sofa.

“He decided that those two photos showed enough emotional range that Cliff would be perfect to play”

the lead in his film, and if the film could get some new songs for its soundtrack from the man who was currently Jake as biggest international pop star, so much of the better. As it turned out, Cliff only recorded one new song for the film, though it would end up giving the film its title. But Cliff did become the star of the film, and as the film progressed, the story of

Ivan Hermarting got into mingle with the story of Cliff. Cliff's character shared his name with Martin, and similarly murders policeman and his himself shot to death. But the story was updated to the late 1960s, and the character shared many biographical details with Cliff himself. He travels to Kingston from the countryside and becomes determined to make a record and become a star, but gets ripped off by the record for juices.

I mean, you get $200 for the record. $20? That don't sound right. How much thing is worse then? I don't really know you know, sir.

“Come on, you must have an idea. What do you think is worse?”

I think I'll be about $200, you know, sir. I don't think I'm sounding this at $20, you know, sir. Yes, sir. I look like we have a new producer. I wish you luck.

You're my own owner. Hi, brother. How you doing? Not bad, you know. I'll just record it like it'll play for me. Oh, yeah. Let me have a look. Hey, you're in a Hilton's making fun? Oh, well, I use this to you, you know. I like the sound.

I see. But, well, I did that record. He'll transmit it. This is my personal record, you know. Is this breast not in mind? I'm an independent producer as well. Like I said, I did with Hilton's that right. You know, this is show business, man.

You know, business? No show? However, unlike Cliff, I haven't descended to criminality.

First getting sentenced to be whipped,

after an altercation with someone who stole his bike leads to him slashing the thief's face. Then, as he finds no success with his record, taking a job as a cannabis runner. I haven't complaints about his low pay for doing the work. Not realizing that the whole of society is in on the crime,

with Kavop police looking the other way and taking a cut off the top. I've been as arrested to teach him a lesson about who's actually in charge. But remembering his whipping, he shoots the investing officer instead. He then goes on a murder spree, killing three police officers and a woman he's had a brief affair with.

And realizes he's become far more famous as an outlaw than he ever was as a singer. The film ends up with him getting gunned down, while we hear the sounds of a cinema audience cheering, as they had earlier at a western film I haven't had watched. The film itself is the kind of ultra-low budget thing that could only really have got an audience in the late 1960s. It's made on super-16 film, for example.

But that cheap option gives the film an out of documentary realism, which has helped by many of the parts in the film being played by non-actors, including small roles for Prince Buster, Duke Reed, Sound Engineer Carlton Lee, and Meckelp producer Joe Gibbs. Something that's also very obvious in the editing.

Many of the conversations about it together from close-ups,

“so the actors involved don't have to remember more than a line or two of dialogue at the time.”

It's a bleak but very powerful film, and one which serves very much as a Jamaican answer

to new Hollywood films like Easy Rider. It's a little out of the scope of this episode, but there's a fascinating essay for somebody to write, on the parallels and differences between the harder they come and Jail House Mark, a film made a little over a decade earlier. Both the cheaply made but surprised in the good films, which feature their stars playing

soan on sympathetic characters, at least partly based on themselves, who want to become successful singers, who end up getting arrested for a violent crime that is at least arguably justifiable, and who get ripped off badly by record executives. Both even feature mildly homoerotic scenes of their protagonists tied up and getting whipped.

a happy ending and redemption of its central character, the harder they come, it's very much

“a post-code film, with an altogether less sanitized worldview.”

The film would cause friction between Cliff and Blackwell though. Blackwell had encouraged Cliff to star in the film, seeing it as the thing that would give him a clear image and also popularized reggae music as a whole to a great extent.

But the film dragged on nearly two years in production because of funding difficulties,

and also some problems with permissions from the Jamaican government,

“who both definitely wanted the kudos of a homegrown feature film, Jamaica's first.”

But didn't particularly want that film to be about institutional corruption and Jamaica's criminal underclass. And while it was working on the film, Cliff's musical releases were less successful. Nothing from another cycle charted, and nor did trapped,

another collaboration with Kat Stevens to follow up wild world.

Chris Blackwell is sanguine about this though. When the film came out, it would be such a boost to Cliff's career and mega in general, but it was super chargey everything.

“And indeed these days, the film soundtrack album,”

make a limitless of the greatest reggae albums and greatest soundtrack albums of all time, even though Cliff contributed so little, but in order to pat it out to follow album length, I'll end up to include alternate versions of the title track, and you can get it if you really want. The album featured several of the recent reggae hits heard in the film, like 07 by Desmond Deca. [Music]

And with his papillon, by the melodians. [Music] But the core of the album was for Cliff's songs. The title track, you can get it if you really want. His recent single Sitting In Limbo, and his old album track, many rivers to cross. [Music]

[Music] When the soundtrack album became popular, that song became the standout, and became the closest thing to a standard that Cliff had ever written. Over the years it's been recorded by Arthur Lee. [Music]

And there are many rivers to cross, and it's only my way. [Music] I need Lennox. [Music]

[Music] Cliff's friend Joe Kaka.

“Man, rivers to cross, but I can't seem to find one way or one way or one.”

[Music]

And with the UK Top 20 Head for UB40.

[Music] And perhaps most consequently, it was recorded by Harry Nelson, with production by Nelson's friend John Lennon. [Music] [Music]

“And Lennon liked the string continuity he wrote for that arrangement enough,”

that he adapted it into his hit single No. 9 Dream, one of his most popular and beloved solo tracks. [Music] [Music] But the success of the soundtrack album, like the success of the film,

wasn't as quick as anyone had hoped. Not only did the film take a while to make and get a release, it took even longer to find an audience, at least in the two big markets that mattered the US and the UK. It won some awards fairly early in European film festivals,

“and the film was such an important event in Jamaican culture that Cliff and Hansel were awarded”

the Order of Distinction by the new Democratic Socialist Jamaican government when it came out in 1972.

But in the UK, the film was originally ignored by the critics and played up first only to

cover be an immigrant communities. But then George Mellie happens to go and see the film. Mellie is someone we've mentioned in passing in various episodes, most notably in the episode on Vakalan line, where I mentioned that his 1951 version of that song was the only song thus far I'd not been able to find the digital release of. Happily, that's been rectified in the years since I did that episode, so let's hear a clip of that.

Let's now. Mellie was a rather extraordinary man with a wide range of achievements. As well as his successes at Trad Jazz Singer and one of the founders of the Trad Jazz movement, he was also an anarchist political activist and renowned lecturer on surrealist art, a comic strip writer, and the author of Revolt Into Style, a book I've referenced before

as the first book by a serious intellectual to take British pop culture seriously on its own terms,

as worth analysis from the inside rather than as an outside observer. And among these achievements,

And he began his column that week with the statement, "For I've been away the best

film of the week was the first ever Jamaican film, the harder they come. That was enough to get

media interest in the UK, and the film became they have not a massive box of his success, a moderate with both audiences and critics. Suddenly the same didn't happen with the US. There the film was licensed to Roger Corman and his company knew world pictures. Corman, who we've seen in the background of many episodes, due to his association with the American

“International Pictures, which he left to found new world in 1970, was one of the most important”

people in mid-century American independent cinema. Mentoring half the most famous diameters and cinematographers of the 70s and 80s, and also responsible for the US release

of a lot of independent, non-American films. But as those who know the story of the release

of the week command will know, for example, he was more concerned than anything else about turning a profit, and would often have films brutally edited to fit a particular mode of release. And with market films in genres other than the ones they fit in, if they could make more money that way. In the case of the harder they come, he tried to market it in the then popular black exploitation genre. And in some ways it fit that quite well.

It was, after all, a crime story with a predominantly black cast, a great soundtrack,

“and dealing with the underworld in a hard-hitting violent way. But it was not an escape”

film like a lot of black exploitation films were. And it was also performed by actor speaking in their own natural Jamaican patwa, which was at times so thick that have seen claims from

some, that it was the first English language film to be put on general release with subtitles,

because American audiences couldn't understand what they were saying. The film's tank without a trace in this market, and eventually handsle up the rights to the film back from Corman, and started having it shown in one-off showings at universities and art cinemas, where it built up a cult following. The rebel outlaw image of the film was so successful that the title track has since been covered by everyone from the English Second Wave Scar Band

Madness to Willie Nelson. Now I've watched Madness.

“However, the time the film's success took. It didn't end up becoming successful in the US until”

1975, caused a massive breakdown between Cliff and Chris Blackwell. Cliff was already inclined to distrust Blackwell simply because of his race. At this point Cliff had firmly joined the nation of Islam, though within a few years he would have moved on to become a mainstream sonny Muslim, and so he believed at all white people were devils. But Blackwell had also been the one to push for Cliff to be in the film, on which Blackwell is an uncredited co-producer,

and for which he's applied a chunk of the funding. Blackwell wanted to use the film to promote a new rebellious image for Cliff, one that Cliff was fine with at the start of filming, but with which he was increasingly uncomfortable as he got deeper into the nation of Islam, and its emphasis on outward respectability. Blackwell had a whole plan set up to make Cliff into a superstar. At three-pronged strategy which involved having the harder they come,

make Reggae into a commercial proposition in America, continuing to sweeten Cliff's Reggae music to make it conform a little more to Anglo-American pop conventions, and promoting Cliff with the rebellious image. Blackwell had explained his plan to Cliff at the start of making the film, when Cliff had been offered $50,000 to leave Island and signed to RCA on the back of his initial British success. He told Cliff he was going to make him a star, making Mitch and popularize Reggae.

But after years of listening to this, Cliff presented the fact that he was in a worse place career-wise than before they'd started to make the film, and left, signing to reprise records in the US and the MI in Europe. So Blackwell instead used his plan on the next Reggae act he signed, getting them to record their most rebellious music to fit US rock sensibilities, and getting Wayne Perkins, the white Taliban and guitarist from the Muscle Shows Band who played

on Cliff's records, to overdub additional guitar.

Cliff had signed to his first record deal, rather than for Cliff himself. Instead Cliff found

“himself floundering, his initial recordings for the MI and reprise, like born to win, a very”

similar in subject matter to the optimistic records he'd have his biggest success with, and might theoretically have brought him more commercial success. But he found he was competing with his old material. The soundtrack albumed to The Harder They Come, from his old record label, started doing big business, and the island proof also be packaging non-album singles and outtakes into new albums. And the new material he was doing,

while pleasant, was not quite up to the standard of his best earlier work. It lost his commercial touch, and the audiences just wanted to hear the old stuff, which was new to many of them. For the next few years Cliff had essentially three different careers. He would play in Britain

“as a very popular nostalgia act, for audiences who remember this hit for a few years ago.”

He would play those same songs in America as an emerging artist for audiences who would just discuffering them. And as one of the few reggae artists to venture into Africa, he became hugely popular in Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal. But his new recordings were doing nothing, and Suni was venting his frustration at Blackwell in songs like No. 1 Ripoff Man.

For several years Cliff continued doing what he had done so successfully with his island breakthrough,

recording with the best Jamaican musicians, and then adding over to his bare American session players. His 1975 album Follow My Mind, for example, has a rhythm section including slide-dumbar

“and Bobby Shakespeare, the pre-eminent Jamaican drum and bass duo over the 70s and 80s.”

But featured Dennis Coffee, the guitarist who played on most of the temptation 70s funk hits on guitar, and found out parks on keyboards. . By the late 70s Cliff was clearly being more influenced by the African musicians, like Fela Couty, he was associating with on his pre-cult West African tours.

Then by the soul and arm and be singers who had been his initial inspiration. In 1978's album Give Thanks, it's a name taken from a master fairy in practice. Was produced by Bob Johnston, who had produced many of the finest records by Dylan, Johnny Cash, Simon and Garth from Cole, and Leonard Cohen. But his as far from those artists as one can imagine. Often, as in meeting in Africa,

for shadowing the 80s world music trend and its incorporation of African pop influences. I don't get to a joven as bad. But yeah, Africa, meeting in Africa. But yeah, Africa, on meeting in Africa. But yeah, Africa, on meeting in Africa.

Give Thanks, bars, online much of Cliff's work in this period.

A critical success. But it was not a commercial one.

Nor was the pile of up, I am the living, which had another celebrity producer, this time Luther Dixon. 1982 was solidly subbungo man, a documentary about Cliff's world tour of 1980. And in particular about his appearances in Jamaica,

That documentary covers events that we will be looking at in much more detail in a future episode,

“as well Cliff was a peripheral figure in the events surrounding the Jamaican election.”

Bob Marley was far more directly involved. The only eighties were problematic for Cliff in multiple ways. He had changed record labels to MCA. And the recordings he made drumming that period are why the regarded as his worst. Trying to change his style up to appeal to a pop audience and falling between two

stools. He also fell a foul of anti apartheid activists by going to South Africa to play a show in

Soweto, for an integrated audience. We'll be talking about the complicated ethics of the cultural boycott of South Africa in a future episode, but for now we can just say that it's very obvious that Jimmy Cliff, a very politically conscious black man himself, was not a supporter of apartheid, and believed that by playing the gig he was helping to work towards the end of apartheid not to pop it up. While those who supported the boycott

“had equally good reasons for thinking it was important to show united funds on the matter.”

This disagreement was eventually resolved, and one of Cliff's most prominent media appearances of the eighties was as well as the old-star group of vocalists who recorded the song's Sun City, under the name artist United against apartheid in 1985. Among the many artists on that track were windy and sea, Africa Bambata, David Buffin, Eddie Kendrick, Bruce Springsteen, Bunny Raid, Lou Reed, Hall & Oats, Pete Townsend, Ringo Star, Keith Richards, Runwood, and Bob Dylan.

Cliff's solo line is actually harmonised with Devil Hall, in a verse whose other lines are sung by George Clinton, Joey Ramone, and Darley in Love.

“It says something about how expected to figure Cliff was in the worldwide music scene,”

but even though he had had no commercial success in the major music markets in over a decade of that point, he was considered a peer of those others. In 1985, would see several events that would affirm that status. Sun City was, of course, just one of many multi-artist or star singles made in the mid-eighties to support some cause of other. With similar records being released to support, for example, the victims of the Zibroga ferry disaster,

the victims of the Bradford City Stadium fire, and the victims of the BBC's decision to wait 18 months between seasons of Doctor Who. These all came about as a result of the success of the singles that started the trend. Band-Aids do they know it's Christmas, and USA from Africa's follow-up we are the world, both raising money free to European family relief. We are the world led to a full album, and for that album Bruce Springsteen, at the time, arguably the biggest

box star in the world, recorded cliffs trapped. In 1985, Cliff also co-starred in his second film Club Paradise. I'm not very highly regarded comedy film directed by Harold Ramesh, which also starred Robin Williams, Peter O'Toole, Rick Mamanis, and Twigie, and for which Cliff contributed several songs to the soundtrack.

The film was a box office and critical failure, but it did raise Cliff's profile some more.

And while Club Paradise was a failure as a film, the soundtrack album got a Grammy nomination. Along with the artifacts by people like the Legendary Calipsonian mighty Sparrow, Cliff contributed seven tracks, including a collaboration with Elvis Costello in the attractions, seven day weekend. The same year, he guessed it with the Rolling Stones on the track too rude. A cover version of the Reggae Song Winsom originally by Halfpaint, released the next year on

And he finished 1985, his most high-profile year in over a decade, with the album Cliff Hanger,

“his second to be produced by Cool and the Gang guitarist Amir Salam by Anne.”

As well as the normal Jamaican musicians like Slime Mubby, the album featured several cool in the gang members, plus guests brought from Jacob Astoria's, and a couple of songs co-written by Latoya Jackson.

The album was not a huge seller, but one cliff is first Grammy Award for Best Reggae album.

Cliff would spend the rest of the 80s and early 90s putting out moderately successful albums that didn't chart, but which did get Grammy nominations, though they usually didn't win. Plainty huge crowds in South America and Africa, and plain to small but very respectable crowds in

“Europe and America. With occasional supports, lots and bigger shows by people like Steve Winnwood”

and the Greatful Dead.

1993 saw him have what would be his final U.S. top 20 hit. With the cover version of Johnny Nash's,

I can see clearly now, recorded for the soundtrack of the film "Cool Vonnings". [Music] Over the next few decades, Cliff shifted steadily more towards live work as opposed to the studio. The albums he did release were a mixture of attempts to appeal to a pop audience,

and more political roots he reggae, so he wouldn't know from one song around him to the next,

whether he were going to get a song called Democracy Don't Work, with lines like,

“when it comes to indigenous peoples' rights, why is the system always giving us fight?”

And, masses of people don't have enough to eat, democracy is built up only for the elite. Or a light hearted cover of Oblidia Oblidia. But he continued to stun audiences in live performances. A typical album was 2002's Fantastic Plastic People, produced by Dave Stewart, formerly of David Smith, and featuring guest appearances from Annie Lennox,

Jules Holland Sting, and Joe Strummer. [Music] That fact was actually the last studio recording Strummer made to be released in his lifetime. Strummer's final band, the Mescalero's, would often cover the harder they come live, and the clashes Guns of Brickston, which Cliff would cover himself later, had Levix referencing

the film. In the last 20 years Cliff only released two albums. 2012's Rebirth, produced by Tim Armstrong, of Rancid, was widely regarded as his best work in years, made Rolling Stones' list of albums of the year, won the Grammy Award for Best Vega album, and went to number one on the U.S. Vega charts. [Music]

While 2022's Refugees, featuring Wycliffe John on their title track,

And of course, Refugees.

“To others, as you would have done until you listen, that's just the word from the wise, lift for the faith that we doubting, and chew, 'cause the proof on you showed it to care about you about us.”

If you really do give us a sigh, we love women and children at the borderline.

Tim and Cliff told me that's many rivers across came to help on my cover, the cause. [Music] It's hard to sum up Cliffe's life and career succinctly, because his impact on music was widespread rather than concentrated.

“He wasn't the biggest star in the world, but he was moderately big everywhere, a truly world-wide success.”

And he did more to popularize the Vega genre outside Jamaica than any one of them but Marli.

And while I don't consider the so-called "Racombole Hall of Fame" as having any special validity, it is notable that those two men are the only two Jamaicans inducted into the hall as of right now. When he died on the 24th of November this year, the outpouring of Luftfehm was far far greater than the mere statistics of chart placements in awards would suggest. Jamaica Liff had a career that was built on self-belief and hard work, and he changed the face of popular music. And while he didn't reach the heights of Superstardom that all the artists he inspired did,

he achieved more than enough to prove that in his case at least, the Olympics to one of his most popular songs were entirely correct.

“You must try, try and try, try and try. You'll succeed at last.”

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