Jimmy Cliff
Better Days Are Coming: The A&M Years 1969-1971 (Hip-O Select)
In stark contrast to Ivan Martin, the singer turned ganja-trade outlaw he brought to such vivid screen life in 1972’s The Harder They Come, Jimmy Cliff gained the world honestly. Hear it in the Jamaican’s preternatural voice all these lifetimes later: still as pure as a blue lagoon. Cliff had been signed to Island Records in London since the Sixties, but it was in the States at A&M that the sound of The Harder They Come started to rock steady. Hip-O Select’s 4-CD, Internet-only Better Days Are Coming dips into this deep pool of reggae lite, but not deep enough. Two commercial LPs room with studio tracks assembled and not, beginning with 1970 catalog classic Wonderful World, Beautiful People. Cliff wrote 10 of the disc’s 12 tracks, including the hope-springs-eternal title cut, modern hymn “Many Rivers to Cross,” and “Viet Nam,” the catchiest protest since Country Joe McDonald’s Woodstock anthem. “Sufferin’ in the Land” is the antithesis of hardship, while “Hello Sunshine” is a Beatles song that got away. 1971 follow-up Another Cycle clutters its arrangements with too much brass and too many Muscle Shoals studio pros save for Harder heart “Sitting in Limbo.” An unreleased disc from the same year as Wonderful World, clean, roomy, organ-coated Island Records soul cut with Leslie Kong’s plucky rhythms, collects another soundtrack star in “You Can Get It if You Really Want,” which Cliff wrote for Desmond Dekker. A last disc, master recordings for 1973’s Struggling Man, matches the first in quality, only with longer, less-hurried grooves, and an early version of “The Harder They Come” and Cliff-hanger “Struggling Man.” Wanted: more rivers.
This article appears in December 16 • 2005.
