Memories of A Legend On His Earthstrong
“Ready?” asked the drummer. “Yes sir!” Toots Hibbert replied.
The year was 1968, and Toots and the Maytals were about to make history at Federal recording studio in Kingston, Jamaica.
The drummer, Winston Grennan of Beverley’s All-Stars, counted off “1, 2…” and the band began to play a brand new sound. The fast-paced ska beat that took Jamaica by storm in the early ’60s had given way to a slower, sweeter sound known as rock steady around 1966. But on this day, the Maytals — a vocal trio comprising Toots and his friends Henry “Raleigh” Gordon and Nathaniel “Jerry” Mathias — were cutting a song called “Do the Reggay.”
Where rock steady songs were more delicate and romantic, the reggae beat was raw and muscular.
“I want to do the reggay with you,” Toots sang, his powerful voice cutting through the rhythm.
“Yeah yeah!” Raleigh and Jerry harmonized.
“Is this the new dance?” Toots went on. “Going around the town?” As soon as their song hit the streets, everybody in Kingston town wanted to do the new dance too.
Toots said the name was inspired by Jamaican slang for girls you see on the street. “From streggae to reggae,” he explained.
If you can sing a song that spawns an entire genre, that’s something. But if that genre goes on to impact global culture for the next half a century or so, you must truly be something special, someone astonishing. “Reggae has gone around the world now,” Toots told me in 2016. “And I never copyright it. If I had charged like a few cents, one cent, I would be a millionaire now.” Full Story After The Jump… (more…)
