Clients JIMMY CLIFF, A REMEMBRANCE

I read of Jimmy Cliff’s passing this morning.   He died at age 81 of pneumonia which followed a seizure.

 

Cliff was one of the greats of Jamaican music and culture.  I first heard Cliff’s song “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” in late 1969 as a 10-year old as played on KHJ, the Los Angeles AM hits powerhouse.   Enduring a miserable childhood, I was uplifted by the positivity of the message and enthralled by the song’s main hook, which was played on a lilting cello.   No guitar solos here.  I had never heard anything like it.   It was probably also the first time I (and many Americans) had heard something in the ska/reggae idiom.  (“My Boy Lollypop?”)

 

I went out and bought a copy of the single with money I made from taking out the neighbors’ garbage cans on Sunday nights.  I finally got to see Cliff perform live when I was 16 at the Roxy in West Hollywood.  Finishing his set with “Wonderful World, Beautiful People,” the band stop playing and left the stage while Cliff continued singing the chorus A Capella, goading the audience to sing along with him.  Finally, Cliff left the stage and the audience left the venue, repetitively still singing the “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” chorus as we walked down Sunset Boulevard to our cars.  If only I felt so hopeful about the world today.

 

In 1972, Cliff’s film The Harder They Come came out.  A gritty story of life in the Kingston slums and the Jamaican music industry, the film became a weekend art-house favorite along with The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Pink Flamingos.   The soundtrack album was a smorgasbord of the best of of Jamaican music and became what is undoubtedly one of the 10 most important soundtrack albums of all time.  Meanwhile, Bob Marley and the Wailers took the reggae reins from there and ran with it, never looking back.

 

I saw Cliff play again at UCLA’s Royce Hall a few years later.  Then in 2011, he started working with my client Tim Armstrong and his band Rancid, ultimately recording an album that won a Grammy for best Reggae album. In 2013, Cliff announced a free sunset concert on the Santa Monica Pier.   I called Cliff’s manager, a guy called Grover who I had met through Rancid, spilled my obsessive guts to him, and he arranged for me to see the Pier show from the side of the stage and finally meet my musical hero and get him to sign (on the front and on the back!) the single I had bought more than 40 years prior.   

 

Godspeed Jimmy.