By the mid-1970s Toots Hibbert and Toots and the Maytals were a road-hardened export act. Jackie Jackson, in a radio interview quoted by Wikipedia, said the group “hit the road in 1975” under the Island-backed band name — the same year the album Reggae Got Soul arrived on Chris Blackwell’s Mango label, distilling what Hibbert had always preached: that Jamaican music and American soul were never separate traditions in his throat.
The record
The set collected new material and re-cut favourites for the album market — Hibbert’s writing still rooted in devotion, struggle and dance-floor joy. The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis, surveying Hibbert’s career after his death, placed him alongside Bob Marley as a “cornerstone of Jamaican culture” by blending “gospel and R&B into nascent reggae music.” Reggae Got Soul is that thesis on vinyl: the Maytals band — Jackson, Paul Douglas, Hux Brown, Radcliffe Bryan — supplying the rock-steady and reggae beds; Hibbert testifying on top.
Before the hiatus
Island would issue In the Dark the following year. The Maytals’ first run wound down in the early 1980s; Hibbert released the solo set Knock Out! in 1981, the Guardian obituary notes, before an amicable disbanding in 1982 and a solo career that would eventually circle back to the Maytals name. But Reggae Got Soul captures the touring band at full strength — the title track a mission statement they would still be performing four decades later.
Why it matters
Long before the Grammy-nominated Reggae Got Soul: Unplugged on Strawberry Hill (2012), this album fixed the phrase to Hibbert’s name. It remains the clearest statement of how he heard reggae: not as a break from soul, but as its Jamaican continuation.
Listen and dig deeper
- Play Reggae Got Soul in the Listen library. Browse Toots Hibbert and Toots & The Maytals.
- Previously: ‘Funky Kingston’ (1972). Next: ‘True Love’ wins the Grammy (2004).
Sources: The Guardian — “Toots Hibbert’s pure, powerful voice carried reggae to the world” (Alexis Petridis, Sep 12, 2020); The Guardian — “Toots Hibbert obituary” (David Katz, Sep 12, 2020); Wikipedia — Toots and the Maytals; Encyclopedia.com — Toots and the Maytals.
Editor’s note: This entry is part of the JamaicansMusic online museum — a career timeline assembled from the archive. It is dated to the era it documents; every claim is drawn from the linked sources.