Toots Hibbert, the pioneering reggae musician who imbued his songs with communal spirit and upbeat soul, died on Friday at the age of 77 years old. As the lead vocalist and songwriter for the Maytals, from the late sixties Toots and his band served to define the sound of reggae, while leading the swell of Jamaican music as it gained in popularity overseas.
Born to Seventh-day Adventist preachers as the youngest of seven children, by his teens Hibbert had moved to the Trench Town neighbourhood in the Jamaican capital of Kingston. A talented multi-instrumentalist with a background in gospel music, he formed the Maytals as a vocal trio in 1961.
Charting a course between ska and rocksteady, citing the influence of American soul singers like Otis Redding and James Brown, the Maytals recorded with the producers Coxsone Dodd, Prince Buster, Byron Lee, and Leslie Kong as Jamaican music flourished in the sixties, emerging as one of the country’s most popular local acts.
Increasingly melding religious themes with urban commentary, in 1966 the Maytals won the inaugural Jamaica Independence Festival Popular Song Competition for ‘Bam Bam’. An eighteen-month prison sentence for marijuana possession momentarily halted the band’s progression, but when Hibbert returned the Maytals scored another hit with ’54-46 That’s My Number’, covering his time in jail.
The 1968 song ‘Do the Reggay’ is widely credited for coining the name of the new genre, as the Maytals added scattershot vocal harmonies and elements of gospel, funk, and soul to the slowed-down groove of rocksteady. In 1969 they released some of reggae’s defining early compositions, including the urgent and exhorting ‘Pressure Drop’ and ‘Sweet and Dandy’, which won another Popular Song Competition.
In 1970, the Maytals scored their first international hit, as ‘Monkey Man’ landed on the singles chart in the United Kingdom. By the early seventies the group had become known as Toots and the Maytals, with Hibbert fronting a roving band of instrumentalists and background musicians.
When The Harder They Come hit cinemas in the United States in early 1973, featuring the Maytals with ‘Sweet and Dandy’ and ‘Pressure Drop’ on the soundtrack, reggae was well on its way to international recognition. Catch a Fire and Burnin’ by Bob Marley and the Wailers were released to critical acclaim in the United States, followed by rave reviews in 1975 when Toots and the Maytals revised and reissued their album Funky Kingston.
Toots and the Maytals disbanded in the early eighties, the climax of Hibbert’s solo period the 1988 album Toots in Memphis, which mined the classics of sixties soul. By the mid-nineties he was back heading up a reformulated Maytals.
In 2004, True Love gathered some of the group’s classic songs performed alongside celebrity admirers like No Doubt, The Roots, and Keith Richards, winning Toots and the Maytals a Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album. A documentary film and frequent covers and samples helped Toots and the Maytals maintain a lively touring schedule, punctuated in 2013 when Hibbert suffered a head injury after a bottle was thrown onstage.
Toots and the Maytals performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2018, and had just released their latest album Got to Be Tough at the time of Hibbert’s passing. His death at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston was confirmed in a family statement, and while no cause was specified, Hibbert had recently been admitted to intensive care following a test for coronavirus. Fans, friends, and collaborators from Ziggy Marley and Chris Blackwell to Mick Jagger and Willie Nelson paid fond tribute.
