RIP Toots Hibbert

Today already sucks, and it ain’t even noon yet.

Got a lot of the credit for the foundation of reggae, yet probably still didn’t get enough of the credit compared to Marley.

Toots Hibbert, one of the fathers of reggae music, whose vocals imbued the genre’s sound with an exhortatory power drawn from American soul, died on Friday night in Kingston, Jamaica. He was believed to be 77.

His death, in a hospital, was announced on the social media accounts of his band, Toots and the Maytals. No cause was specified, but he was recently reported to have been hospitalized with Covid-like symptoms.

Mr. Hibbert holds a firm spot in Jamaica’s musical pantheon as the first artist to use the word reggae on a record, on the rollicking 1968 single “Do the Reggay” by his group, which was originally billed simply as the Maytals. By some accounts, it was an accidental coinage — Mr. Hibbert has said he was thinking of “streggae,” local slang for a “raggedy” woman — but it stuck, branding the new sound that would become Jamaica’s greatest cultural export.​

Raise a Ting and light one up (if you’re into that).

Toots Hibbert, a Father of Reggae, Is Dead

 

Ah, this sucks. He did an album of collabs with a lot of mainstream artists back in the 00s that I adored. About to take a two-hour drive so I'll queue this up. RIP.

 

His duets with Willie Nelson were pure gold. Toots was a great man.

 

I always thought his voice had some Otis Redding to it. RIP to a true musical giant.