Jamaican singer Jimmy Cliff, known especially for his songs Reggae Night And Many Rivers to Cross or his interpretation of I Can See Clearly Now, died at the age of 81, his wife Latifa announced on the artist’s official account this Monday morning.
“It is with deep sadness that I announce that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has left us due to an epileptic seizure followed by pneumonia,” he wrote.
The artist began his career in the 1960s, when Jamaican ska would give birth to reggae, and at the age of 24 he won an international song contest in Brazil that gave him his first fame in South America.
Lead actor in a crime film The Harder They Come in 1972 and the writer of its soundtrack, Cliff broke through in the United States with the title song, which in the early 2000s was included in the list of the “500 greatest songs of all time” by American magazine Rolling Stones.
In the 80s, several albums recorded specifically with Kool & The Gang musicians achieved worldwide success: Power & Glory (where the title appears Reggae Night), Cliff Hanger Or Hanging Fire. He has also collaborated with Steven Van Zandt, the Rolling Stones, Joe Strummer and, in France, Bernard Lavilliers and Yannick Noah.
More information to come…
