The second of
Jimmy Cliff's three albums for
Reprise in the mid-'70s,
Music Maker has on the surface all of the ingredients that went into
Cliff's wonderful late-'60s work with producer
Leslie Kong. The songs are melodic and wise while the production yields a bright
pop sound with subtle
reggae rhythms that are implied more than they are front and center, and floating over the top of everything is
Cliff's distinctive, expressive tenor. But something intangible is missing, and while it is tempting to suggest that what's absent is
Kong's input (
Kong died in 1971, shortly after
The Harder They Come was completed), the truth is that
Cliff's songwriting sounds a bit labored here. Not that there isn't strong material on
Music Maker.
"Foolish Pride" is a lovely song, for instance, while
"I've Been Dead for 400 Years" carries the kind of historical and political commitment that made
Bob Marley an international icon. But nothing on
Music Maker has the kind of easy universality that earlier
Cliff songs like
"Many Rivers to Cross" or
"The Harder They Come" exhibited. Another problem with this album, at least in retrospect, is the heavy use of the Moog synthesizer, which gives the whole enterprise a kind of dated feel, while the
Kong-produced material, by contrast, comes across as wonderfully timeless. Still,
Cliff is too good a singer and writer to ever put out a completely bad album, and his obvious well-meaning sincerity comes close to making this one work. The best of
Jimmy Cliff's work on
Reprise has been collected on
The EMI Years 1973-1975, and that may be the best way to sample this time period in the singer's career. [The British edition has entirely different artwork and was titled
House of Exile.] ~ Steve Leggett
