Jimmy Cliff - Wolf Lake Memorial Park Pavilion, Hammond, IN, 7-16-2014

Yesterday (November 24, 2025), the world lost another musical great, Jimmy Cliff. He was 81 years old. I wanted to post something to pay tribute to his musical legacy. I looked around, and to my pleasant surprise, discovered this concert. Someone posted it at a bootleg sharing site for the first time just yesterday, also to pay tribute to him. So you haven't heard this before.

This comes from a soundboard, and the sound quality is excellent. However, there was one problem with the recording: it captured what was heard on stage great, but there was almost no sound of the audience. So I ran every song through the MVSEP program, splitting the crowd noise from everything else. Then I greatly (and I do mean greatly) boosted the crowd noise at the ends of songs and other appropriate places, like during singalongs. So this version sounds even better than the one that first appeared just yesterday.

Cliff put out a lot of classic reggae music in the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s. But then he put out mere okay albums for a long time. However, in 2012, he had an excellent comeback album appropriately titled "Rebirth." It won a Grammy for the best reggae album of the year, and Rolling Stone Magazine named it one of the best 50 albums of 2012. Even though this concert took place well over a year after the release of that album, he was still touring to support it. Four songs here come from that album: "Rebel Rebel," "World Upside Down," "One More," and "Children's Bread."

This is a fairly long concert, which gave Cliff time to play most of his best known songs. He also managed to weave in a kind of personal musical history, which included him performing some of his earliest songs, like "King of Kings" and "Miss Jamaica" from the early 1960s, but also some cover songs that were influences on him, like "Honor Your Mother and Father," "Judge Not" (written by Bob Marley before he was famous), "Hold Me Tight," and "Cupid." All in all, this is a great concert recording to remember him by.

This album is an hour and 58 minutes long.

01 Bongo Man - Rivers of Babylon (Jimmy Cliff)
02 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
03 King of Kings (Jimmy Cliff)
04 Miss Jamaica (Jimmy Cliff)
05 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
06 Hard Road to Travel (Jimmy Cliff)
07 You Can Get It If You Really Want (Jimmy Cliff)
08 Wild World (Jimmy Cliff)
09 Rebel Rebel (Jimmy Cliff)
10 Under the Sun, Moon and Stars (Jimmy Cliff)
11 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
12 Vietnam (Jimmy Cliff)
13 World Upside Down (Jimmy Cliff)
14 Treat the Youths Right (Jimmy Cliff)
15 Rub-A-Dub Partner - Reggae Movement (Jimmy Cliff)
16 Many Rivers to Cross (Jimmy Cliff)
17 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
18 Honor Your Mother and Father (Jimmy Cliff)
19 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
20 Judge Not (Jimmy Cliff)
21 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
22 Hold Me Tight (Jimmy Cliff)
23 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
24 Cupid (Jimmy Cliff)
25 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
26 The Harder They Come (Jimmy Cliff)
27 I Can See Clearly Now (Jimmy Cliff)
28 Reggae Night (Jimmy Cliff)
29 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
30 One More (Jimmy Cliff)
31 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
32 Welcome Home (Jimmy Cliff)
33 Wonderful World, Beautiful People (Jimmy Cliff)
34 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
35 Sitting in Limbo (Jimmy Cliff)
36 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
37 Children's Bread (Jimmy Cliff)
38 talk (Jimmy Cliff)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/68X6ncJE

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/Ey7q5QBV8qvDarH/file

The cover photo is from the Austin City Limits Festival at Zilker Park, in Austin, Texas, on October 10, 2014.

Various Artists - Homeward Bound: A Grammy Salute to the Songs of Paul Simon, Hollywood Pantages Theater, Los Angeles, CA, 4-6-2022

I've recently discovered a bunch of tribute concerts. I find these really interesting, but they seem to often slip through the cracks in terms of being shared bootlegs. So I'm going to try to make posting these a higher priority. Here's a Grammy-related tribute to Paul Simon from 2022. It took place just three days after the annual Grammy Awards ceremony that year, and in the same city, so many of the stars who attended that could attend this one as well.

It goes without saying that Simon is one of the greatest songwriters of all time, so he deserves a tribute like this. In fact, I've found a MusiCares tribute concert from 2001 and a Gershwin Prize tribute concert from 2007 both celebrating his songs that I plan on posting too. Like those, this one features many big stars playing his most beloved songs.

It also features Simon performing a couple of songs of his own at the end of the concert. This is especially significant because he was 80 years old at the time of this concert, and his voice was noticeably weakening with age. He announced a farewell tour in 2018, so this seemed like one of his last public performances. Since then, though, he decided to have one more tour in 2025, with about 20 concerts. Be that as it may, one can hear the change in his voice in this performance. Thankfully, he realized his limitations and had another singer tackle the vocally challenging song "American Tune" while he just played guitar on it.

The music here remains officially unreleased. However, it was broadcast on television, so there are video files of it. I took a high quality version, converted it to audio format, and broke it into mp3s. The sound quality is excellent. I kept most everything, except I cut out some talk from the unnamed female emcee every time there was a commercial break, which happened every few songs. Hopefully this now sounds seamless, without any hints of those commercial breaks.

Some of the banter between songs were little speeches by famous non-musicians, such as Woody Harrelson, Dustin Hoffman, and Oprah Winfrey. Famous rock star Elton John also only talked. In his case, his talk was a video broadcast, so he probably didn't sing as well because he wasn't there in person.

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long.

01 talk (emcee)
02 Kodachrome (Brad Paisley)
03 talk (Woody Harrelson)
04 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Jonas Brothers)
05 talk (Garth Brooks)
06 The Boxer (Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood)
07 talk (Elton John)
08 talk (Susanna Hoffs)
09 A Hazy Shade of Winter (Susanna Hoffs)
10 talk (Herbie Hancock)
11 talk (Sting)
12 America (Sting)
13 talk (Billy Porter)
14 Loves Me like a Rock (Billy Porter)
15 talk (Dustin Hoffman)
16 talk (Stevie Wonder)
17 Mrs. Robinson (Stevie Wonder with Sheila E. & the Jonas Brothers)
18 talk (Bonnie Raitt)
19 Something So Right (Bonnie Raitt & Brad Paisley)
20 talk (Stevie Wonder)
21 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Stevie Wonder & Ledisi)
22 talk (Sofia Carson)
23 Mother and Child Reunion (Jimmy Cliff & Shaggy)
24 Take Me to the Mardi Gras (Trombone Shorty & Irma Thomas)
25 talk (Eric Church)
26 Homeward Bound (Eric Church)
27 Slip Slidin' Away (Little Big Town)
28 talk (Folake Olowofoyeku)
29 Homeless (Take 6)
30 Under African Skies (Angelique Kidjo with Dave Matthews)
31 You Can Call Me Al (Dave Matthews with Angelique Kidjo)
32 talk (Oprah Winfrey)
33 Graceland (Paul Simon)
34 talk (Paul Simon)
35 American Tune (Rhiannon Giddens with Paul Simon)
36 The Sound of Silence (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/5j4GUcC1

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Vz5ALstXCYeahHB/file 

The cover shows Paul Simon about to receive a hug from Oprah Winfrey. It's from this exact concert.

Jimmy Cliff - BBC In Concert, Glastonbury Festival, Worthy Farm, Pilton, Britain, 6-24-2011

Here's reggae star Jimmy Cliff performing at the annual Glastonbury Festival in 2011.

It seems Cliff actually played the festival two other times, in 2003 and 2008. But I can't find any recordings of those. Maybe they'll turn up eventually. And this is the only BBC concert I can find from him, period. 

Also, it seems at least two more songs were played in this concert, "Treat the Youths Right" and "Save Our Planet Earth." But it seems this was all that got broadcast by the BBC, so it's all I have too. Furthermore, the last song, "One More," got cut off near the end. I added some applause from earlier in the show to hopefully give it a decent sounding finish.

This music here is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 Introduction (Jimmy Cliff)
02 You Can Get It If You Really Want (Jimmy Cliff)
03 Wild World (Jimmy Cliff)
04 World Upside Down (Jimmy Cliff)
05 Vietnam [Afghanistan Version] (Jimmy Cliff)
06 Rebel in Me (Jimmy Cliff)
07 Many Rivers to Cross (Jimmy Cliff)
08 I Can See Clearly Now (Jimmy Cliff)
09 Bongo Man - Rivers of Babylon (Jimmy Cliff)
10 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
11 One More (Jimmy Cliff)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/PKPXgzEQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/u0ybSZiD5TSHfkT/file 

The cover photo comes from this exact concert.

Woodstock '94, Winston Farm, Saugerties, NY, 8-12-1994 to 8-14-1994 - Day 3, Part 9: Jimmy Cliff

The ninth album from Day Three of the Woodstock ‘94 Festival was a set by Jamaican reggae star Jimmy Cliff. 

Technically, this was billed as “Jimmy Cliff’s All Star Reggae Jam featuring Rita Marley, Eek-a-Mouse, and Shabba Ranks.” However, I listened to the set, and I watched most of the video of it on YouTube, and I didn’t see any sign of Marley or Ranks. Wow, since Marley was the wife of reggae, legend Bob Marley, I’m sure she would have been introduced at some point, but she was not. Eek-a-Mouse sang lead vocals on one song, “Love Me,” and participated in another song, the Bob Marley classic “One Love.” Furthermore, relatively unknown female vocalist at the time, Diane King, sand on two songs, “One Love” again, and also another Bob Marley classic, “Stir It Up.”

Other than that, it was a fairly long set, one of the longest of the entire festival, and Cliff sang most of it.

At the time, new albums weren’t getting much attention or sales. However, he had a big hit in 1992 with a cover of “I Can See Clearly Now,” which was one of the first reggae hits in the US back in 1972. Not surprisingly, he performed that near the end of this set.

This album is an hour and 42 minutes long.

01 You Can Get It If You Really Want (Jimmy Cliff)
02 Treat the Youths Right (Jimmy Cliff)
03 You Are My Rub-A-Dub - Bend Down Low - Reggae Down Babylon (Jimmy Cliff)
04 Many Rivers to Cross (Jimmy Cliff)
05 We Are All One (Jimmy Cliff)
06 Save Our Planet Earth (Jimmy Cliff)
07 All for Love (Jimmy Cliff)
08 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
09 Samba Reggae (Jimmy Cliff)
10 Jam [Instrumental] (Jimmy Cliff)
11 Ashe Music [Higher and Higher] (Jimmy Cliff)
12 Wonderful World, Beautiful People (Jimmy Cliff)
13 The Harder They Come (Jimmy Cliff)
14 Love Me (Jimmy Cliff & Eek a Mouse)
15 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
16 Stir It Up (Jimmy Cliff & Diana King)
17 One Love (Jimmy Cliff, Diana King & Eek a Mouse)
18 Vietnam (Jimmy Cliff)
19 I Can See Clearly Now (Jimmy Cliff)
20 Higher and Deeper Love - Bongo Man - Rivers of Babylon (Jimmy Cliff)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/k8nNX3VQ

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/xpsi36V1NUGdQrn/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert.

Jamaica World Music Festival, Montego Bay, Jamaica, 11-25-1982, Part 4: Jimmy Cliff

The fourth set on the first day of the 1982 Jamaica World Music Festival was performed by reggae star Jimmy Cliff.

Cliff is one of my favorite reggae artists, and probably one of those with appeal outside of the reggae world. I've been meaning to post a live album from him for ages, so it's a good thing that this festival forced me to do so.

Much like the Toots and the Maytals set earlier on the same day, it's a bit frustrating to me that some really key songs weren't played, such as "Sitting in Limbo," "Wonderful World, Beautiful People," and "You Can Get It If You Really Want." But he was really keen to play his newest music. He put out the album "Special" earlier in 1982. He played no less than eight of the twelve songs from that album, plus a couple more from his 1981 album.

This album is an hour and 26 minutes long.

44 Originator (Jimmy Cliff)
45 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
46 Give the People What They Want (Jimmy Cliff)
47 Let's Turn the Tables - African Chant (Jimmy Cliff)
48 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
49 Roots Radical (Jimmy Cliff)
50 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
51 Treat the Youths Right (Jimmy Cliff)
52 Rock Children (Jimmy Cliff)
53 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
54 Music Maker (Jimmy Cliff)
55 Many Rivers to Cross (Jimmy Cliff)
56 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
57 Special (Jimmy Cliff)
58 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
59 Love Is All (Jimmy Cliff)
60 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
61 Peace Officer (Jimmy Cliff)
62 The Harder They Come (Jimmy Cliff)
63 talk (Jimmy Cliff)
64 Rub-a-Dub Partner (Jimmy Cliff)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16407800/VA-JmicaWrldMsicFstvlMntgoByJmica__11-25-1982Prt04JmmyClff_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2qJFdki9

The cover photo of Cliff comes from this exact concert.