Frederick “Toots” Hibbert, the Jamaican vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who gave reggae music its name and wrote some of its classic tunes, including “Pressure Drop” and “Monkey Man,” died yesterday, apparently of complications of COVID-19. He was 78.
The Maytals, led by Hibbert’s powerful voice, were already a popular vocal group when they released “Do the Reggay” in 1968, thought to be the first use of the word in Jamaican music. He told an interviewer, “There was a slang word in Jamaica, streggae. People would say, ‘Oh, that girl looks streggae,’ meaning ragged-looking, or worn out. Somehow I changed that to reggay.”
After spending more than a year in jail on a marijuana charge, he wrote “54-46 Was My Number” about the experience. Here he plays it with Daryl Hall on “Live at Daryl’s House,” Hall’s internet concert show, in 2007.
The Maytals could make any song sound funky, as they proved with John Denver’s “Country Roads,” though he changed the lyric from “West Virginia” to “West Jamaica.”
And though I’ve featured it as SOTD before, it’s always a good time to hear my favorite Toots composition, a tune that featured in the soundtrack of the film that introduced most Americans to Jamaican music, “The Harder They Come.”
