Toots and the Maytals

Toots Hibbert is one of the great voices of Jamaica, a legend whose career spans every development in Jamaican music, from ska to rocksteady to reggae. TOOTS & THE MAYTALS have helped to chart the course of Jamaican music with unrivaled delivery and dynamism, setting new standards of excellence, and becoming the most enduring of all Jamaica’s groups.
 
Born in Maypen in the parish of Clarendon, Jamaica — the youngest of seven children — Toots began singing in the church choir at the age of seven. He left home in his teens to go to Kingston, where he met Raleigh Gordon and Jerry Matthias and formed the original Maytals in 1962. They were also sometimes recorded as the Vikings.
 
The Maytals began their career at Studio One, the headquarters of Clement “Coxsone” Dodd, in Kingston, Jamaica. The group’s debut release, Hallelujah, was an immediate hit throughout the island, and featured a mix of Jamaican rhythms and gospel vocal influence that would mark much of The Maytals’ music. Further successes followed, including I’ll Never Grow Old and Just Got to be Me, each one building a reputation for The Maytals and their energetic straight-from-church style of singing and their “spiritual” ska beat.
 
Despite the initial successes, the group soon left Coxsone and linked up with another legendary figure in the Jamaican music business, Prince Buster, the number-one sound-system operator on the island. The Buster-produced singles were popular successes in Jamaica and England, where this new type of “ska” music became a sensation in dancehalls.
 
In 1966, The Maytals began to work with Byron Lee and the Dragonaires, and won the first Jamaican Festival Song Competition with the song “Bam Bam.” The Maytals were poised for stardom, but just as their fortune seemed set, Toots was arrested for possession of marijuana and was incarcerated for 18 months, despite his plea of innocence. The Maytals returned with a vengeance in 1968, recording with famed producer Leslie Kong. The era of ska was ending, giving way to the more complex sounds of Reggae evolving from Kong’s Beverleys Label. Although these years of post-independence marked a more violent era of Jamaica's history, Toots & The Maytals were far closer to soul and gospel influences than many of the “revolutionary” young artists of the late ’60s. Nevertheless, The Maytals’ first single in two years, “54-46 (That’s My Number),” combined the story of Toots’ arrest with a powerful downbeat to create one of the greatest rocksteady/reggae singles of all time.
 
As rocksteady became reggae (and The Maytals’ single “Do The Reggay” was the first published use of the word), The Maytals consolidated their position as leaders in Jamaican music. They recorded the hit “Monkey Man” and the classic “Sweet and Dandy,” which won the 1969 Festival Song Competition and was featured on the soundtrack to The Harder They Come, one of the great reggae albums of all time.
 
In 1975 Toots & The Maytals signed a worldwide recording contract with Island Records. The following year, the group hit the British singles charts with “Reggae Got Soul,” the title track to their new album. They also toured America, Europe, and Britain. Constant touring showed audiences what Jamaicans had known for over a decade — that Toots & The Maytals were simply one of the greatest live acts in the world. Their popularity increased throughout the ’70s and ’80s with such popular releases as Pass the Pipe (1978), In the Dark (1979), Just Like That (1980), and Knock Out (1982).
 
After disbanding The Maytals in the early ’80s, Toots began recording with Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare. The combination produced Spiritual Healing. The popular and critically acclaimed Toots in Memphis (1988) followed, featuring Toots covering Stax classics in his own inimitable way.
 
Toots reformed The Maytals and picked up the touring pace again in the early ’90s. The group released Recoup (1997) and the Grammy-nominated Skafather (1998). The Maytals also hold the record for the largest number of number-one hits in Jamaica, with 31 to their credit.
 
The 2002 release, World Is Turning, on Toots’ own D & F label, was the first album of all-new material to be released in two decades. The album contains songs that were works in progress over a long period between 1973 and 2002, and features refreshing originals with a wide variety of styles and influences, including rocksteady, reggae roots, funky R&B, rave disco, and gospel.
 
The 2004 album True Love found Toots & The Maytals revisiting some of the band’s most classic works with a host of musical friends onboard — Keith Richards, Shaggy and Rahzel, Bonnie Raitt, Jeff Beck, Ben Harper, No Doubt, Marcia Griffiths, Ken Boothe, Ryan Adams, Bootsy Collins and the Roots, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Terry Hall and the Skatalites, and Trey Anastasio — for a delightful fresh-ear journey through Toots’ musical history.
 
Indeed, Toots & The Maytals’ artistry spans every phase of Jamaican music’s evolution, earning Toots the reputation as one of Jamaica’s most consistent and inspired performers, and one of the greatest reggae/R&B singers of all time. Generations of fans — old and new — are discovering that Toots and the Maytals were — and are — masters of reggae and the live performance. The combination of great reggae rhythms, heartfelt vocals, and soulful gospel influence remains potent and powerful — probably the most cohesive mix of reggae and soul music ever, and still going strong.