Harder They Come (Deluxe Edition)

This 1973 film broke reggae into U.S. pop culture with Jimmy Cliff's Many Rivers to Cross ; the Maytals' Pressure Drop , and the rest of its stellar soundtrack. 30 years later Island and Hip-O teamed to create this 2-CD edition, the definitive master of the original plus 18 cuts of crucial 1968-72 reggae: Guava Jelly Johnny Nash; Sweet Sensation Melodians, and many more of Cliff's classics. Great new liners, too!

Jamaican filmmaker Perry Henzell made reggae an integral player in his gritty 1973 saga of a renegade Kingston singer who becomes a modern Robin Hood, casting one of the style's earliest stars, Jimmy Cliff, in the lead, and filling this soundtrack--here presented in a remastered version--with classics from Toots & the Maytals ("Pressure Drop," "Sweet and Dandy"), Desmond Dekker ("Shanty Town"), the Melodians ("Rivers of Babylon"), and the Slickers ("Johnny Too Bad"). Cliff himself gets pole position, however, getting in the first ("You Can Get It If You Really Want") and last ("The Harder They Come") words in this first-rate reggae primer, which also features Cliff's enduring "Many Rivers to Cross." --Sam Sutherland