Jimmy Cliff’s wife Latifa Chambers confirmed his passing on Facebook on Monday. Jimmy Cliff was a famed Jamaican musician who, along with Bob Marley, popularized rocksteady, ska, and reggae music over a six-decade career. She stated that a seizure followed by pneumonia was the culprit.
James Chambers was born on July 30, 1944, during a hurricane in St. James Parish, northwest Jamaica. In the 1950s, he and his father relocated from the family farm to Kingston, the nation’s capital, with the goal of becoming successful in the music business. Cliff would go on to record more than thirty albums and perform all over the world, notably in Paris, Brazil, and at the 1964 World’s Fair, an international exhibition that took place in New York.
The producer of Bob Marley and the Wailers, Chris Blackwell of Island Records, asked Cliff to collaborate with him in the United Kingdom the next year. He earned a Grammy for best reggae album in 2012 for “Rebirth,” which was produced by Tim Armstrong of the punk band Rancid. In 1984, he won another Grammy for “Cliff Hanger.”
The Jamaican government awarded Cliff the Order of Merit, the highest honor in the arts and sciences. In 2010, he was admitted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
