Toots and the Maytals: Funky Kingston/In The Dark : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Toots Hibbert reigns as the premier soul-shouter of reggae, and Funky Kingston was his LP introduction to the U.S. in 1975. Combining it with the always-import In the Dark results in the smartest presentation ever of these sessions. Those obsessed with earlier Jamaican 45s may claim the twenty-one tracks here are just post-classic, but there's no denying the avid gospel-meets-ska in the grooves or Hibbert's throaty attack on his material. "Louie, Louie" and John Denver's "Country Roads" serve as mere sketches to be filled by his exhortations, grunts, invented lyrics and impromptu vocalese. All his moods are outsized. Hibbert parties with a fury in "Pomp and Pride," tells his jailers to shove it in the prison-song landmark "54-46 Was My Number" and laments a crashing economy in "Time Tough." The set ends with a climactic added-on track, "Pressure Drop" -- an exuberant roar as mysterious and magnetic as "Louie, Louie" itself.