On 28 August 2020, Toots Hibbert and Toots & The Maytals released Got to Be Tough — the first studio album in a decade and, as events would confirm, the last of Hibbert’s life. NPR’s obituary described an “impassioned” set: global atrocities on “Just Brutal,” obstacles on “Struggle,” decency against corruption on “Warning Warning,” and the indomitable title track.
The sessions
The album was produced by Zak Starkey — son of Ringo Starr and a longtime Maytals collaborator — with Ivan Neville and Taro Yoshihira among the players; Keith Richards’s son Tarquin appears on guitar, the Guardian noted in its death report. The sound looked backward and forward at once: the patented Maytals swing updated for a veteran voice still capable of preaching and pleading in the same breath. Play Got to Be Tough in the Listen library.
Hospital
Two days after release, Hibbert was admitted to the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston, NPR records. On 31 August the band’s social media confirmed he had been tested for coronavirus and placed in intensive care; a spokesman said he was “fighting for his life,” the BBC reported. The album’s title took on unintended weight — a 77-year-old founder of reggae insisting, one last time, on endurance.
Posthumous honour
Got to Be Tough would receive a Grammy nomination for Best Reggae Album at the 63rd Awards in 2021 — Hibbert’s seventh nod and, the Recording Academy records, his second win, accepted posthumously. The record stands as bookend to a career that began in a Kingston barber shop in 1962.
Listen and dig deeper
- Play Got to Be Tough in the Listen library. Browse Toots Hibbert and Toots & The Maytals.
- Previously: The Grammys and reggae’s main stage (2013). Next: Toots Hibbert dies in Kingston (September 2020).
Sources: NPR — “Toots Hibbert, Reggae Ambassador And Leader Of Toots And The Maytals, Dies At 77” (Sep 12, 2020); The Guardian — “Toots Hibbert, pioneering reggae star, dies aged 77” (Sep 12, 2020); BBC News — “Obituary: Toots Hibbert” (Sep 12, 2020); Recording Academy — Frederick “Toots” Hibbert artist page.
Editor’s note: This entry is part of the JamaicansMusic online museum — a career timeline assembled from the archive. It is dated to the events it documents; every claim is drawn from the linked sources.