{"id":15249,"date":"2018-10-03T05:30:24","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T09:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=15249"},"modified":"2018-09-20T09:00:12","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T13:00:12","slug":"toots-the-maytals-rocking-steady-for-more-than-a-half-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/03\/toots-the-maytals-rocking-steady-for-more-than-a-half-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Toots &#038; the Maytals: Rocking Steady for More Than a Half Century"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ask a casual music fan to name a reggae artist, and you\u2019re likely to hear the name Bob Marley. And while it\u2019s true that Marley and his group the Wailers were making ska and rocksteady music\u2014two Jamaican styles that predate reggae\u2014as early as 1963, it was the Maytals who first used the term reggae, and can thus lay legitimate claim to being the \u201cfirst\u201d reggae group.<\/p>\n<p>Led by singer, guitarist and songwriter Frederick \u201cToots\u201d Hibbert, the Maytals (or Toots &amp; the Maytals, as they would soon become known) released the single \u201cDo the Reggay\u201d in 1968. A hit in Jamaica, that single helped reggae\u2019s popularity begin to spread beyond the Caribbean island nation. In 1969 the group scored more Jamaican hits with the singles \u201c54-46 (That\u2019s My Number),\u201d \u201cPressure Drop\u201d and \u201cSweet and Dandy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-15250\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/toots.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"550\" height=\"367\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/toots.jpg 550w, http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/toots-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In 1970 Toots &amp; the Maytals broke out internationally with \u201cMonkey Man.\u201d That and the three previously-mentioned singles were included on the group\u2019s now-classic 1969 LP <i>Sweet and Dandy<\/i>, reissued in the U.S. (in modified form) in 1972 as <i>Monkey Man<\/i>. Two Maytals songs were featured on the soundtrack of the influential 1972 film <i>The Harder They Come<\/i>, and a deal with Chris Blackwell\u2019s Island Records helped make <i>Funky Kingston<\/i> (1973) and 1975\u2019s <i>Reggae Got Soul<\/i> international hits. The Who asked Toots &amp; the Maytals to be their opening act on the British group\u2019s 1975-74 tour of North America, helping to further expand the Jamaican group\u2019s audience.<\/p>\n<p>In the new wave era of the late 1970s and early \u201880s, renewed interest in ska led to revived popularity of some of the Maytals\u2019 earlier, pre-reggae recordings. Both the Specials and the Clash covered songs from the Maytals\u2019 reggae years.<\/p>\n<p>Toots &amp; the Maytals split in 1981 after the release of their <i>Knockout<\/i> LP, but Hibbert reformed the group with a new lineup a decade later. The band played two high-profile, well-received sets at the 2017 Coachella Festival; later that year the group headlined the world-music WOMAD Festival; the festival launched by Peter Gabriel was celebrating its 35 year anniversary.<\/p>\n<p>Toots &amp; the Maytals have released more than 30 albums\u2014studio, live and compilation\u2014and in late June the group was once again in the studio, working on a follow-up to 2012\u2019s <i>Reggae Got Soul: Unplugged on Strawberry Hill<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ask a casual music fan to name a reggae artist, and you\u2019re likely to hear the name Bob Marley. And while it\u2019s true that Marley and his group the Wailers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[3563],"class_list":["post-15249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reggae","tag-toots-and-the-maytals","cat-63-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15251,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15249\/revisions\/15251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}