Toots and the Maytals: Live : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Over the last ten years, ska, rock steady and reggae have received nearly enough press attention to put Jamaican music in contention with the Kennedy assassinations for media overload. More's the pity, because, in both cases, we still seem to have scant understanding of the story behind the story. Blondie, for instance, just scored a Number One hit with "The Tide Is High" without anybody even mentioning that the song (miscredited on Autoamerican) was a huge success in the mid-Sixties for Jamaica's premier rock-steady group, the Paragons, whose leader, John Holt, wrote it. (One wonders who'll be cashing the royalty checks.)

General ignorance reigns as several Jamaican-style rock-soul capillaries threaten to be a dominant influence on mainstream rock & roll for yet another decade. Members of such derivative bands as the Specials and the English Beat confess that they know precious little about their precursors and the origins of the music they're playing. But now, three marvelous records have arrived that should help remedy the situation.

On Bunny Wailer Sings the Wailers, one of the founding members of that seminal trio is in fine, smoky-smooth voice as he updates ten of the Wailers' early Jamaican singles, from the sparkling ska smash, "Dancing Shoes," to "Rule This Land" (originally released in Jamaica as the rude-boy classic, "Jail House") to Peter Tosh's disarmingly arrogant solo hit, "I'm the Toughest."

Wailer's singing somehow manages to evoke the reedy authority of Bob Marley and the sizzling bark of Tosh while allowing his own self-satisfied, Sam Cooke-style delivery to shine. Because the percussion is mixed piping hot and then layered on top of vocals that are occasionally spliced into "dub-wise" (lapses into bare rhythm tracks) chunks, the authentic unhurried ska feel is lent a swaying reggae shading that almost makes it sound like a new genre rather than an adroit renovation.

James Brown and Otis Redding have long been cited as Toots Hibbert's chief influences, but Hibbert's febrile Pentecostal histrionics really owe a great deal to Jamaican gospel-ska groups like Basil Gabbidon's Mellowlarks. To see Toots and the Maytals live is to witness a rambunctious, sweltering and slightly screwy spectacle, not unlike an impromptu revival meeting in a jammed bus terminal. Grinning like a lunatic, growling like a soothsayer on Seconals, Hibbert is pretty tough to ignore. Toots Live offers proof positive. Recorded last September at the Hammersmith Palais in London, this LP earned a place in The Guinness Book of World Records when a limited edition of 1000 copies hit the stores the next morning. The show itself set new standards for audience intoxication and manipulation, as Toots and the Maytals' mighty roar commanded the obedient throng to do everything but backflips. A good primer for the Specials, et. al.

Created and/or discovered by Island Records' Lister Hewan-Lowe, Jah Malla demonstrate on their second album (1979's promising Alive and Well is distributed by Rounder) that they're the best reggae band in America. Combining an aggressive "rockers" pep with a polished funk intellect and gentle cascades of vocal harmonies, Jah Malla excel in such tracks as the wry "She's Reggae for It Now" ("She's a Gucci beauty," they sing, but "she's reggae for it now") and a previously unreleased Bob Dylan song, "Ain't No Man Righteous, No Not One."

Rasta reverence meets born-again fire and brimstone in the latter tune, and the two click neatly. But then, the rapid growth of this savvy group seems almost preordained, since keyboardist Michael Ranglin and drummer Noel Alphonso are the sons of legendary Skatalites Ernest Ranglin (the king of ska guitar) and sax man Roland Alphonso (who appears on Jah Malla). Thank Selassie somebody's hip to reggae's bloodlines.