Toots and The Maytals -

Time Tough: The Anthology

Posted: September 18th, 2008

Date: 1996 (release)
Release: Island #524219
Cover Art: view / download
Buy the Album

“Reggae means comin’ from d’people, you know. Everyday ting, like from the ghetto. Majority beat. Regular beat that people use like food down there. We put music to it, make a dance out of it. I would say that reggae means comin’ from the roots, ghetto music. Means poverty, suffering, and, in the end, maybe union with God if you do it right.”

– Fred “Toots” Hibbert, interviewed by Stephen Davis, The New York Times

While Bob Marley & The Wailers have now come to symbolize reggae, Toots & The Maytals were equally important figures in the evolution of Jamaican music, from ska, through rock steady, and into reggae. Formed in Kingston during the ska wave of the early ’60s, the Maytals were comprised of Toots, Nathaniel “Jerry” Mathias and Raleigh Gordon. A favorite singer of Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, Toots is not only one of reggae’s most glorious founding fathers, he is widely credited with giving the genre its name with his 1968 hit, “Do The Reggay.”

Like so many other reggae greats, Toots escaped poverty through music. In 1962 he moved from the Jamaican countryside to the Kingston ghetto of Trenchtown, finding inspiration in the gospel-rooted soul music of Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, and Wilson Pickett, which came in over the airwaves from New Orleans and Miami. Experimenting with these soulful sounds, Toots & The Maytals evolved a style of their own that would later be known as reggae.

While Toots’ contemporaries shared many of the same influences, nobody else embraced the spirit of American gospel, soul and R&B singing more fervorishly or naturally. Known for his scorching live performances, Toots was quite possibly the only Jamaican singer who could have played before the rough and tough Apollo Theater audiences of the 1960s without getting booed off stage.

But it was far more than Toots’ soul and gospel-drenched vocals that set him apart, it was his songwriting. Always a master of musical self-expression, his writing skills really didn’t mature until 1966, when he was thrown in prison for possession of marijuana. Immediately after his release a year later, he took the Maytals into the studio and recorded (for legendary Jamaican producer Leslie Kong) “54-46 (That’s My Number),” a song about his imprisonment whose title references Toots’ prisoner ID number. Belted out with raw soul conviction, this lyrically scathing rocksteady song struck a chord with listeners, becoming a hit in both Jamaica and England.

By the early ’70s, Toots & The Maytals had conquered their native island with a sting of hits, most of which are compiled on Time Tough: The Anthology. Their music first reached American shores in 1972, with the release of the soundtrack to Jimmy Cliff‘s blaxploitation-reggae film, The Harder They Come, which included the Maytals’ hits “Pressure Drop” and “Sweet And Dandy.” In 1975, after signing on with Chris Blackwell‘s Island Records, they issued their debut US release, the explosively hard-edged Funky Kingston. An album that embodies the musical bonds between the Kingston ghetto and the streets of Harlem, Funky Kingston was an ambitious merging of black roots and cultures that only Toots could pull off.

Featuring over 40 tracks spanning the group’s three-decade career, the double-disc Time Tough: The Anthology compiles many of the best Toots & The Maytals songs, from the raw early ska work-outs like “Broadway Jungle,” to the rocksteady standard, “54-46 (That’s My Number),” along with prime reggae classics like “Pressure Drop” and “Funky Kingston.” Far more than an expanded greatest hits collection, Time Tough includes top album cuts, rare singles and three previously unreleased tracks.

The only problem with the set is the second disc, which chronicles Toots’ less-than-great later years. But if you toss out the second disc (which I strongly recommend), then this anthology becomes an essential collection of gritty and soulful Jamaican music from one of the island’s lesser known legends.