"Jimmy is his name, music is his game," an announcer said before reggae icon Jimmy Cliff took the stage at My Father’s Place in Roslyn on Nov. 24, 1978. After enthusiastic applause from the crowd, Cliff and his band launched into "Bongo Man," a hypnotic chant off his then-newest album, "Give Thankx."

Reggae was then still so new that a Newsday article the year before helpfully provided its pronunciation: "reh-gay."

Cliff, who died last month, was embraced by Long Island during the 1970s and beyond. He played one of his earliest shows here to a small but dedicated crowd on Nov. 1, 1975, at Hempstead's Calderone Concert Hall . By then he was becoming a cult hero in the U.S. for his role in the 1972 Jamaican crime drama "The Harder They Come," which had just started screening regularly

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