Toots and the Maytals: Toots In Memphis : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

With his band, The Maytals, Jamaican singer Toots Hibbert has long turned out a brand of reggae infused by his reverence for American soul men like Otis Redding and Solomon Burke. On this fine new release, however, Toots goes right to the source. He recorded a batch of R&B standards in Memphis with producer Jim Dickinson and a band that combines reggae rhythm masters Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare with crack sessionmen from Memphis and Muscle Shoals.

Admittedly, covering such masterpieces of vocal performance as Al Green's "Love and Happiness," Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle," James Carr's "Love Attack" and Ann Peebles's "I Can't Stand the Rain" (retitled "Love the Rain" here) is perilous. Toots pulls it off, however, primarily because he is a worldclass singer himself but also because his treatments blend respect for the originals with a good-natured, uncompetitive ease.

With help from Sly and Robbie, Toots relaxes the intensity of the Memphis rhythms, and his unfailingly sunny disposition brightens the emotional character of the songs. The result is an anthology of soul classics that is as dreamy as it is danceable – because when Toots came to Memphis, he didn't leave Kingston far behind.