TRY AND TRY:

Cliff, who recently turned 77, relocated from the family farm to Jamaica's capital as a young man in the late 1950s (a move later echoed by the character he played in the movie The Harder They Come), and "jumped at the chance" to attend the World's Fair in New York in 1964.

Together with Millie Small and Prince Buster he performed at the event's Jamaica Pavilion, to introduce ska, and perhaps make it as lucrative an export as calypso had been. It didn't work out that way - "they took the right singers, but the wrong band, they took a slick showband with no feel for the music" - but in New York Cliff met Island Records boss Chris Blackwell, who invited him to work in the UK.

"That was pivotal in my career, but at first I said no! I was in New York, the press there wrote about me favourably so I felt I had an opportunity there. Then Chris said: 'Look what I did for Millie in the UK.'" Her single My Boy Lollipop had reached number two in the charts there. "I knew I was bigger than her in Jamaica, so I figured maybe he can do something for me and I went."

In England in the second half of the 1960s, he toured almost constantly and made a few records he admits "didn't go anywhere". Unfortunately, the singer selected for his ska chops had arrived as Blackwell - years before his success with Bob Marley - was repositioning Island from Jamaican music towards the UK hippy market, with artists such as Traffic, John Martyn and Fairport Convention. Cliff, it seemed, was an attempt to create a black pop-rock star who wasn't American, and the failed records he speaks of were a long way from ska. He was produced by, among others, Tony Visconti, of T Rex and David Bowie fame, and worked with another of Blackwell's proteges, Nirvana, a symphonic rock outfit best known for their 1967 concept album The Story of Simon Simopath (and not to be confused with the Kurt Cobain band).

While '60s London may not have swung for Jimmy Cliff, he flourished abroad, recording at Muscle Shoals in Alabama, and performing all over Europe with the multiracial soul/blues band The Shakedown Sound. He appeared on French rock TV alongside Jimi Hendrix and Cream, and moved to Paris for a while; he spent time in Africa and became a superstar in Brazil after he was invited to represent Jamaica at an international song festival.

"I had come to England with big dreams, but it didn't happen that way, so I wanted a change," he says. Cliff won the festival with a number called Waterfall - written by Nirvana - then stayed on in Brazil to record a huge-selling album with a distinct samba flavour, Jimmy Cliff in Brazil.

While working with local musicians, he realised he should be back in Jamaica, in Kingston studios, with reggae artists and his old mentor producer, Leslie Kong. Then the hits started flowing. Wonderful World, Beautiful People and Wide World both reached the UK top 10 as the '70s began. Building on the profile he had cultivated, he became reggae's first international star.

In 1972, he starred in the now-cult movie The Harder They Come, playing country boy Ivan who comes to Kingston to be a singer, and gets on the wrong side of the law to become an anti-establishment folk hero. Originally approached to do the music, Cliff's bravado when meeting the writer/director Perry Henzell - "He asked did I think I could do the music, I told him I knew I could do the music" - and his proximity to the lead character earned him the starring role.

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