Toots and the Maytals: Ska Father : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Sure, Toots Hibbert's early singles make him a "ska father." And his 1968 "Do the Reggay" establishes him as one of the first to use the term reggae. But the fifty-two-year-old Jamaican-music pioneer doesn't need such trivial proprietary claims: He possesses one of the most soulful voices in all of popular music. And Ska Father proves that he still knows how to use it.

Working through remakes of his old standbys ("Pressure Drop," "Broadway Jungle"), as well as gospel-tinged originals ("God Bless You") and a snappy ska treatment of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me," Hibbert ad-libs like he's looking for a spot on an Otis Redding-style soul revue. The heated vocal entreaties and the extravagant swoops and groans are never about showoff technique: They're his way of exhorting listeners to seize the day. Remaking the 1972 classic "Pressure Drop" was unnecessary, but most of Ska Father suggests that Hibbert can be persuasive even when his material is not: Everything he sings, even the moralistic "The Right and the Wrong Way," has the excitement of a soul-saving ritual in progress.