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Toots & The Maytals

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Toots & The Maytals is a group from Jamaica built around the singer Frederick Toots Hibbert. He was born in 1942 in May Pen, sang gospel in a church choir as a child and moved to Kingston in the late 1950s. There in 1962 he formed the vocal trio The Maytals with Henry Raleigh Gordon and Nathaniel Jerry Mathias. They made their first recordings at Studio One with the producer Coxsone Dodd, with The Skatalites as backing band. With their gospel-style close harmony singing they were then more popular than The Wailers.

Music and breakthrough

In 1966 they won the first Jamaican song festival around independence with Bam Bam. Hibbert then spent eighteen months in prison; he wrote 54-46 That's My Number about that time. With the producer Leslie Kong came a series of hits, including Do the Reggay (1968), the first song with the word reggae in it. Pressure Drop, Sweet and Dandy and Monkey Man also became well known. In the 1970s the group signed with Chris Blackwell's Island Records, appeared in the film The Harder They Come and made Funky Kingston (1973) and Reggae Got Soul (1976). Hibbert died in 2020.

Influence

The Maytals helped take the music of Jamaica from ska through rocksteady to reggae, and brought it to a worldwide audience. Hibbert's raw, fiery voice was often compared with that of Otis Redding. During the ska revival around 1979 The Specials recorded Monkey Man and The Clash covered Pressure Drop. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the group in the origin of the word reggae.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Do the Reggay and notice the rhythm: slower than ska, with the emphasis on the offbeat and a prominent bass line. Hear how Toots announces the new dance with a voice still full of gospel.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

See also

Categories: ArtistsSka, rocksteady and reggae