There are two traditional critical lines on Jimmy Cliff, neither of which I buy. The first is that, like Toots Hibbert, Jimmy is an Otis Redding disciple, which strikes me as downright weird…. The second is that he hasn't written a decent song in years, which is unfair, but at least I can understand the basis for it. Although there are indeed some marvelous things scattered across the albums he's made since The Harder They Come made him a star, his early songs were just so good, and their impact on an American audience hearing them for the first time all at once was so overwhelming, that it's made it difficult for his admittedly less consistent recent stuff to get the fair hearing it deserves. (pp. 94-5)

The bottom line … is: get The Harder They Come soundtrack immediately if you don't already own a copy, hunt around for...