Jimmy Cliff, reggae giant and star of landmark film 'The Harder They
Come,' dead at 81
[November 25, 2025]
By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) — Jimmy Cliff, the charismatic reggae pioneer and actor
who preached joy, defiance and resilience in such classics as “Many
Rivers to Cross,” “You Can Get it If You Really Want” and “Vietnam” and
starred in the landmark movie “The Harder They Come,” has died at 81.
His wife, Latifa Chambers, confirmed his death Monday. Chambers and
Cliff's three children also posted a message on his social media sites
that he died from a “seizure followed by pneumonia.” Additional
information was not immediately available.
“”To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was
his strength throughout his whole career,” the announcement reads in
part. “He really appreciated each and every fan for their love.”
Cliff was a native Jamaican with 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,” delayed for some two years because of sporadic
funding, was the first major commercial release to come out of Jamaica.
It sold few tickets in its initial run, despite praise from Roger Ebert
and other critics. But it now 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 rivaled Marley as the genre’s most prominent
artist. On an album that included Toots and the Maytals, the Slickers
and Desmond Dekker, Cliff was the featured artist 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.
The music lives on
Cliff’s career peaked with “The Harder They Come,” but, after a break in
the late 1970s, he 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 U.S. 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.
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Singer Jimmy Cliff performs at The Climate Rally, an Earth Day
concert, on the National Mall in Washington, on Sunday, April 25,
2010. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
 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 honors included induction into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame and Jamaica's Order of Merit. 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 Saint 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.”
Approaching stardom
His popularity grew over the second half of the 1960s, and he signed
with Island Records, the world’s leading reggae label. Island
founder Chris 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 artist 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?’”
____
Associated Press journalist John Myers Jr. in Kingston, Jamaica,
contributed to this report.
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