Album Review: Toots and the Maytals – Got to Be Tough  (Trojan Jamaica)

0

Frederick “Toots” Hibberts is one of the world’s all-time greatest singers. Passionate people still like to duke it out as to who was greater Soul singer, Otis Redding or James Carr. Toots is a blend of both.

Got to Be Tough is his first studio album in ten years. In 2013, performing in Richmond, Virginia he was struck on the head with a vodka bottle. Badly concussed, he withdrew from music. He pleaded for clemency of the 19-year-old responsible at sentencing. Part of the victim impact report mentioned anxiety, memory lapses, an inability to recall the lyrics of his classic material correctly.  The music may have been lost but gradually, he was able to come back.

Put time into the studio. Working old moves, get the body moving and freeing the rhythm. Toots has also been a boxer in earlier times, like James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Berry Gordy.

So, Drop Off Head and a Rocksteady rhythm with funk accents from the guitar. Ska ones from the saxophone. Bass is fluid and sinuous, like James Jamerson or latter-day Bill Wyman. The voice has just a bit of gravel and vulnerability, but most of it is still there. If you fall, you can rise.

Just Brutal is therefore a surprise. Some gospel testifying with some throat shredding like the classic hard sound of the Five Blind Boys, or Sensational Nightingales. The music is a rhythm riff drone with keyboard accents and guitar chanks. Everything we do is just brutal/ Don’t know what this world is coming to.

The title song Got to Be Tough is one of the highlights. Reaches back to a classic Reggae riff with the off-beat accented. Reggae took inspiration from the protest and Civil Rights songs from Dylan in the Sixties. Then add the sweeter melodic sounds of Curtis Mayfield and social conscience as he approached the early Seventies. Driven by the motor of Fifties New Orleans Rhythm and Blues.

Freedom Train is similar. A swirling keyboard but mostly an insistent rhythm which animates the feet and the hips and skanks along just nicely. The backing singers get to stand up with some call-and-response.

A little petulance from a long-time fan. The Maytals have long been the backing musicians and singers. Originally, they were Henry “Raleigh” Gordon and Nathaniel ”Jerry” Matthias and I miss them. They added that mysterious component of inspiration which is impossible to quantify, but which lifted the classic material into the realm of unbridled joy and pure energy. Even just a brief roll-call. Monkey Man, Sweet and Dandy, 54-46 Was My Number, Walk with Love. And of course, the sound of God hitting the Earth and the Earth hitting back that is Pressure Drop. I only saw the Crucial Three once so I count myself blessed.

Warning Warning has a simple melodic backing with restrained flourishes. Toots singing is melodic and softer and sounds more Otis-like. Inspired and bringing it back to the old school classics. The horns are not quite right. They need to be more Stax-like.

Which they do on Good Thing That You Call. Toots has inspiration in his voice like the old days. The instruments are given space. The sound closer to Stax.

Stand Accused is certainly more latter-day Toots. The Reggae bass sounds strikingly similar to a James Brown Funk bass.

I wish every day could be just like today/ Great comes out of evil/ Evil gone for good/ I stand accused for doing the right thing

The music is warm and bright. There is sunshine everywhere. The Pentecostal Revival tent of optimism. Socio-politically, this is the early Seventies of Black consciousness and Blaxploitation.

Three Little Birds has Ziggy Marley accompanying, and it is Father through and through. It can stand as a tribute. Great syn-drum accents similar to Sly Dunbar.

It is welcome and inspirational to hear Toots again. He has always been uplifting and inspirational, and often ferocious. Time and life are taking their toll on the great Voice. And as with Johnny Cash, maybe it’s time for Rick Rubin to be calling soon.

Rev Orange Peel    

                 

Rev Orange Peel
Latest posts by Rev Orange Peel (see all)