He was a popular artist in Jamaica for four decades and is also known for his work tutoring younger musicians including Bob Marley and the Wailers and Jimmy Cliff.
[1] Higgs then concentrated on a solo career and also worked with Carlos Malcolm and the Afro-Jamaican Rhythms, before joining Lynn Taitt's The Soul Brothers as lead vocalist.
[2] In fact, it was at one of the informal music lessons Joe Higgs held in Trench Town, that Bob and Bunny Livingston met Peter Tosh.
[1] Higgs won the Jamaican Tourist Board Song Competition in 1972 with "Invitation to Jamaica", released as a single on his own Elevation label, and much of his best-known solo work was issued in the 1970s.
His debut album, Life of Contradiction, had been recorded in 1972 for Island Records, but as Island boss Chris Blackwell felt that it would be difficult to market it remained unreleased until 1975, when it was issued by Micron Music,[6] and has been described as "a seminally sophisticated work combining reggae, jazz, and rhythm and blues influences to create a new texture that would have a profound effect on the best Jamaican music to follow".
[1] His 1983 single "So It Go", with a lyric critical of the Jamaican government of the day was banned from airplay and led to harassment which would eventually lead to Higgs relocating to Los Angeles, where he lived for the rest of his life.
[7] Two further albums were released in the 1980s, Triumph (1985) and Family (1988), and in 1990 he recorded Blackman Know Yourself on which he was backed by the Wailers Band, and includes covers of the Marley/Lee Perry songs "Small Axe" and "Sun Is Shining".
Through pain you guard yourself with that hope of freedom, not to give up...""[8]Higgs died of cancer on 18 December 1999 at Kaiser Hospital in Los Angeles.