NEVER GET WEARY YET TOOTS

Rip It Up, Issue 67, 1 February 1983, Page 14

NEVER GET WEARY YET TOOTS

by Duncan Campbell

Equal rights - everyone is crying out for peace, no. one is crying out for justice I don't want no peace, we all need equal rights and justice - right here in Jamaica." (Peter Tosh) Marcus. Garvey words come to pass/Marcus Garvey words come to. pass/Can't get no food to eat/Can't, get no money to spend. (Burning Spear) Time tough, everything is out of sight It's so hard f Time hard, Everything is going higher and higher. (Toots and the Maytals) Jamaicans have lived with inequality, injustice and above all, fear, throughout their country's chequered history. None more so than the followers of Selassi I, the ones still thought by many of their countrymen to be mentally ill, the ones held up as bogeymen by mothers to bad children. The Rastas. Yet out of all conflict and misery comes some good. Rastafarians make up the major percentage of Jamaica's best writers, poets, artists, craftsmen, and above all, musicians. Rastafari is their identity, their dignity, their culture. They vent their suffering, their frustrations, through the urgency and vitality of the most significant music the world has heard since the Blues. In reggae, Jamaica has found its voice. When it comes to picking the great voices of reggae, everyone mentions Frederick 'Toots' Hibbeft..His:voice remains unsurpassed, and in over 20 years of performing, changes in musical trends have not affected him. In fact, he has breasted musical evolution, not only keeping pace with it, but also claiming, with some justification, to have assisted it. He thus remains a respected figure both as a pioneer and an innovator. , Toots' dialect is not always easy to. understand, but there is plenty of it, so you just tune in and pick out the meaning where a literal translation is not possible. He is a garrulous, swaggering

figure with an impish sense of fun, like a Third World version of Hasek's Good Soldier Schwejk. Modesty is not one of his strong points, but beneath the unabashed self-promotion there is deep reverence for things spiritual and compassion for his fellow man. Toots was born in the country town of May Pen, west of Kingston, in the 19405. He moved to Kingston around 1961, where he teamed up with Raleigh Gordon and Jerry Mathias. This trio first named itself the Vikings, then changed it later to the Maytals, a name Toots says "don't mean nothing." The trio survived until just recently, when Mathias married an American girl and dropped out. Toots says he can come back anytime. All three had a strong church background and the testifying gospel style of singing has always been a feature of the Maytals sound. Anyone who saw The Harder They Come will recall the church scene and the electrifying singing of the congregation, reaching orgasmic intensity. The Maytals blended this fervour with the almost equal passion of the American R&B music they were hearing on the radio at the time. Toots takes up the story: "1 used to listen to Ray Charles and a lot of American singers, y'know? Little Richard, Wilson Pickett, lot of singers. Everyone tell me I gotta sing, everyone encourage me. In those days, was a lotta fun. You want your name to go on record, you want your record to go over the air, people been askin' about you, you singin' good sounds. "In Kingston, there was some people called Music City. They started to record me. First producer was Coxsone (Clement Dodd). We record lots in them days, two track studio in little house, not professional, like now. But Coxsone, he is the one who taught us the recording business." Toots may have some fond memories of Dodd, but there is

little doubt that the man exploited the Maytals for every penny he could get and they saw very little. Their first single for Coxsone was called 'Victory', but by the time they quit his studio, they were singing a song called 'Broadway Jungle', celebrating their freedom from Dodd's clutches. Many other musicians tell similar stories of being paid peanuts by Dodd and other 'heavy' producers, and being threatened with violence, even guns, when they complained. Toots is philosophical about such things now. He sees them as part of growing up. " When you jus' start to do some t'ing you don't really understand, y'know, before you become professional, you must have to go through some changes. I didn't get a lotta money but I wouldn't call it a ripoff, because here I am. I can get more than 1 used to get, y'know? Before you have a manager, before you learn how to run your business properly, you have to be somethin' within yourself, go through a lotta t'ings, just to fulfill your work." After Dodd, the Maytals recorded several hits with Prince Buster, then went to Byron Lee's Dynamic Sounds studio. In 1966, Toots was busted for selling ganja and spent several months in prison. From this experience emerged '54-46 Was My Number'. Its original version, which appears on In The Dark, tells how Toots was allegedly set up: You believe I would take something with me And give it to the policeman I wouldn't do that So I was innocent, what they done to me, They was wrong... That 'Give it to me one time, etc', which is used as a crowd participation piece these days, is actually a counting of the strokes of the cane, still used as a punishment in Jamaican jails. The late Leslie Kong was the Maytals' next producer, of hits including 'Monkey Man' (and the follow-up, 'Monkey Girl'), 'Peeping Tom' and the classic 'Pressure Drop'. This was a time of evolution for the music, as ska became the slower, meditative beat of rock steady. The sound was essentially transitory, with its peak period being between 1966 and 1968. The musicians and producers began experimenting again, speeding up the rhythms and adding more bass. The sound was harder, more aggressive, but more accommodating to the body. You could find your own rhythm, set your own pace and dance happily all night. It caught on quickly and all it needed was a name. "I am the first person that put 'reggae' on the air, with a record I called 'Let's Do The Reggay'. The word is coming from way back, it is, like, Jamaican slang, a joke, y'know? It come from the slang word 'streggay', which we take and change to 'reggae'.' 'Streggay' is actually a low sexual term, a kind of jokey proposition the rude boys used to shout at the girls. The big change for Toots and the Maytals came around 1971, when they were signed to Island records. Chris Blackwell polished up their sound, produced Funky Kingston and put them on tour outside Jamaica for the first time.

Sweetwaters, January 29: Reggae was made for the great outdoors and the big crowds. Toots' experience shows in the

way he works the audience. It's their show as well as his and he exhorts them to sing, dance, clap and generally satisfy him that they're enjoying themselves. His stage craft owes plenty to the American soul reviews of the 1960 s Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and James Brown. It delivers, but to these ears, there's something missing. The sound is thin, the rhythm having almost no offbeat, the essential reggae counterpoint. Too much USA, not enough JA. Pam and Audrey, the two American girls brought in to do the high harmonies, have good voices, but they don't match the ecstasy of the Gordon-Mathias combination. Old Raleigh is still there, pounding the congas, but he doesn't look happy. The rest of the band is a well-seasoned collection of session musicians. People like Hux Brown, Winston Wright and Jackie Jackson have played with Toots for years and he wouldn't feel comfortable with anyone else. The jarring note is lead guitarist Carl Harvey, whose loud, flashy solos (some played with the teeth, Hendrix style) just grate on the nerves. A few days later, at a sound check, he's fooling around with some cliched soul licks, showing where his heart really lies. Verdict: adequate, but they weren't really trying.

The pressures of constant touring during the early 1970 s began to take their toll on men who had spent all their lives on a tiny island in the middle of the Carribean. The pace was too hectic, the audiences and the business people very demanding. In 1976, Toots recorded Reggae Got Soul, a patchy album that included a trite version of Van Morrison's 'I Shall Sing' and a remake of 'Six And Seven Books'. The saving grace was 'Premature', one of his best ever, about the dangers of letting girls marry too young. The banal title track, written with co-producer Warrick Lynn, remains ironically one of Toots' best-known songs. The overall impression is of an album he had to, rather than wanted to make. Toots was turning back to religion more and more to find solace and strength, evidenced by the album's opening track, 'Rasta Man'. It's actually a remake of an old single, 'Bam Bam' and is perhaps Toots' most overt statement on Rastafari. Most of his conversations at the time concerned this topic, and it was not long after the release of Reggae Got Soul that he dropped out. T was praying then. All my time was in prayer. I wanted to know the way of Rastafari, the right way to praise God. So I just stop singing, live off my income and pray more regularly wid my bredrens and my family. "Then Bob Marley die. He was a good friend of mine and so I say 'OK, I'm gonna start singing again'. Maybe if he was still singing I wouldn't sing so often. I don't wanna get in no competition, I just wanna be popular with people. But since he died, I say OK, lemme give the people somethin', y'know? Cause they need it, and he died, so I have to develop my musical career.'' Since his re-emergence, Toots has recorded three albums, though only the latest, Knock Out, comes close to the early standards. It took him a long time to get his voice back in shape, and even today, he has to be gentle with it. His religious themes have become more diverse, but there is still a strong God consciousness running through many of his songs. "I'll never change. I'll always be Rastafari. Rastafari mean 'Man of God', but you have to understand it, why God named Rastafari, y'know? You wanna call God 'God', or you wanna call him Rastafari, is jus' a name. You gotta know why you call it that. It's not a name for everyone to call every time. You have to have time to think, how to do good. And when you do it right, and you live right with people, then is Rastafari. It's quite different from what other people believe, y'know? You have to look within yourself and see the t'ing that you are doing. And if it is right, then is Rastafari. Is not a name to talk every time, and make it commercial, like a joke, you know what I mean? Is the Father name. So if you choose to call him that name, you have fe live the life to suit the name and to suit the word that you speak. "All I do is call my Father name when I want to call his name. I call him Rastafari, I call him other names, because he have a lotta names. So I don't haveta say I am Rastafari, because people know, they see my work is clean and they say: That Toots is Rastafari'." This vehement declaration of faith ends in laughter. Faith may be a serious thing for Toots, but it is also a joyous thing. He has found his own peace, and can get on with his life. Mainstreet, February 2: The sound check is meticulous and painstaking. Winston Wright moves back and forth between the stage and the mixing desk, advising local sound man Doug Jane on how things should sound. Mixing reggae is as complex a task as playing it. The bass must be solid enough to feel, but not at the expense of the rhythm guitars. The keyboards are also mainly a rhythmic instrument, but you have to get the right blend. Wright plays a Yamaha piano and an original Hammond organ he's used for donkey's years. Very cumbersome when touring, but nothing else would sound right. Toots doodles around on a clavinet, one of several keyboard instruments he plays. The other gradually pick up on the theme he's playing, until it builds into a quite intriguing little instrumental, that would cause no shame as a dub mix. Toots enjoys dub and even did a version on the flip of Beautiful Woman. But he prefers to "Sing joyful sounds to God , as he puts it. The magic moment comes when Toots begins to check the vocal mix. First on stage, then standing out on the floor, mike in hand, he listens to himself singing and makes sure Pam and Audrey can be heard properly as well. The song they use for this is an unreleased track called 'Spiritual Healing . Toots actually wrote it more than 15 years ago, but never got around to recording it. Now, hes going to release it, in response to Marvin Gaye ("It is full of strength, y'know?"). 'Spiritual Healing' is one of the most heartstoppingly beautiful songs I have ever heard. A ballad that simply oozes soul. Its chord progression resembles Gaye's 'Let's Get I On , but predates that by several years as well (If Toots is being truthful and I have no reason to doubt him). Sadly, the band didn t know it well enough to play it on this tour. But watch for it as a single. It will floor you. The show that night hammers the Sweetwaters performance into the long grass. The rhythm penetrates your bones, lifts you up, shakes you about and finally drops you into a limp, sweaty and inarticulate heap. Get Up, Stand Up and 54-46 take on more of the old rock steady grace. The pace is murderous, as Toots swings the band through 'Spend A Weekend' and 'Funky Kingston'. The audience is not large, but it's nice to have some breathing space to dance down front. The bonus is another unrecorded song, the very moving 'Marley's Gone Away'. Getting Toots to speak about Bob at all was very difficult. This is his statement about his friend and there is nothing more to say ("He was my good friend and he died. I don t think about it. ). Verdict: Oh yes. This was the one.

Winston Wright has plenty of his own stories to tell, but just doesn't get much chance to tell them. He is genuinely surprised to be asked for an interview. Wright is now 42 and has been playing since he was 21. He was born in St Thomas and started playing harmonica in high school. He later took up piano and played organ at the St Gabriel Church. His first group was the Mercury's of Clarendon, who played a brash mixture of gospel and R&B. He later recorded several albums as a member of Lyn Tait and the Comets, and spent three years as a member of the house band that backed the West Indies and Federal label recording artists. Up till 1970, he was a member of the Supersonics, a highly influential band led by the great sax player, Tommy McCook. Wright, Hux Brown, bassist Jackie Jackson and drummer Paul Douglas have been a regular session group since the early 1970 s under such names as the Dynamites and the Sheiks. Apart from backing Toots, they are on call as individuals for session work. You name them, Wright has probably played with them. He's also worked with just about every producer, from Lee Perry and Prince Buster, to Harry Johnson and Joe Gibbs. Top bands like the Roots Radies or Sly and Robbie's Taxi are seldom out of work. But business at home for the musician is not so good these days, for a variety of reasons. “The work is not as regular as five or six years ago, because the cost of living is high," Wright explains. "Acetate is very expensive so music production has dropped to around 60 percent of what it was five years ago, which is a bad drop for the industry. "I might be in the studio every other day, but then a week might pass with nothin' and I must get somethin' to do. But the recording money isn't bad, so when you make an LP, you can sit on that money for maybe a week. You have two dollar, you have fe know how to pinch it, same with 20, same with a thousand. You don't throw it away." Most of the big names in production are still there, though some are not as prolific as they once were. King Tubby, the original dubbing master, ekes out a living with voice, rather than music production. Clement Dodd remains a shadowy figure, probably because of his reputation. Lee Perry's Black Ark studios are long closed, after he had a nervous breakdown, destroyed his equipment and left for the United States. Wright was one person who was there when the transition was made from ska to rock steady. The w'ay he tells it, the musicians called the shots and the public adapted to their ideas. It was an exciting period. "It was a natural change and we actually did the change. We were with Tommy McCook in the last era of the ska. We went into Duke Reid's studios and we started to change the music. It got a little bit slower, we put spice into it. Is not the people that change the music. Music change the people. "Duke Reid and Coxsone were responsible for the change in the sound, but half that responsibility still lie on the musicians, because it was really the musicians who did it, y'know. The producer, he doesn't know about music, he can’t tell you to play this, cut down that part. He can't dictate, it was solely the musicians. Even to this day." Wright's favourite producers are Lee Perry and Bunny Wailer ("There is something in them you can take out and put into the music."). The musician's lot, same as the Rasta's lot, is still not an easy one. As Toots says: "If you smoke, you get trouble. If you don't smoke, you get trouble. Same t'ing." Wright says Jamaica is still a very divided society, very class conscious. Also very drugs conscious. "As an entertainer, if you go with the herb, some people look down on you, some people love you. As an entertainer, you have to level yourself to other people, high society and middle class people." Live concerts in JA are still are rare occasion. The two main events are the annual Sansplash and the World Festival, both of which are financed by foreign concerns. There aren't many other opportunities to play live. "Basically, the time change. Ten years ago you could keep dances filled, but nowadays, only quarter filled. I dunno, it might be the generation change, time change, buildings go, the cars come. There's not a lotta entertainment, like years gone by. You used to be able to go to clubs, hear good music, go

into the hills, hear good music. But through the years, a lotta those things cut out. That's why they start up the Sunsplash, to get people back into the music business, get people to know one another, vibrations moving." Discos are the major musical outlet now, and the DJs are the new stars. Artists like Yellowman, the newest toasting sensation, can catapault themselves to stardom overnight with one single. Interestingly, Toots' manager also handles Yellowman, and is currently negotiating a major recording deal for him. But as Wright points out, for every Yellowman there are a dozen others who try for years and never make it. Jamaican musicians have become more strongly unionised in recent years, with the aim of protecting their interests and getting the money that's due to them. Copyright is a very fragile and much-abused thing. A single backing track can be reused several times. The original vocal is stripped off by the producer, a dub version can be made under a different title, or a toaster can do a new vocal track. The one who usually pockets the profits is the producer, who puts his own name on the writing credits, and the musicians who had the original idea sees nothing. Wright quotes a prime example from his own experience. In 1969, an instrumental called The Liquidator' was released. It was a big hit in Britain as well as Jamaica. The artists were listed as Harry J's All Stars, and the writing credit went to producer Harry Johnson. Wright was outraged when he saw this, since the tune was actually written by him. When he tried to have it out with Johnson, the producer threatened him with a gun. Wright was not the only one to be intimidated by such tactics, nor was Johnson the only armed producer. Three years later, a Memphis songwriter stole the same chord progression, note for note, and wrote a number one hit for the Staple Singers, I'll Take You There'. Says Wright: "I never got so much as a cuppa tea outa that." A hard lesson was learned. "Just a month ago, some guys from the United States came down to Jamaica, and the local musicians had a big convention at the Sheraton Hotel, to learn about copyrights. Before, you had producers ripping off artists, giving them a dollar and keeping the rest. So there comes a time when everybody realise what's happening, everybody travel now, they know what other musicians get. So now the Jamaica Federation of Music is working on that, opening a copyright office, get contacts with London and let everybody know what's happening. "Like, you maybe repord an album, it sell nothing in Jamaica, that's what the producer tell you when you ask why you get no money. But he knows that it is number one in Europe, or is selling big in America, or even here in New Zealand. But before, only the producer know that, so he get the money.

Things is better now, people travel, they know when their records are selling.' But it take a long time. . Mainstreet, February 3: The place is packed tonight, and the air is stifling, despite the newly-installed fans. This.crowd is out to get smashed and fall.over. They know Toots only by his best-known songs, and the. majority are more interested in the booze and : their own conversation. Some of the dancers down 'front; are getting aggro, ' and Toots tries,to. calm things down’ when a"-can is thrown. There was no i time for a proper sound check because the drug squad raided several hotel rooms in the afternoon'.-.ln the end only Winston Wright is charged with possessing cannabis. He is discharged with 150 dollars in costs the following day. All this puts a strain on the band, and ; the sound isn't a patch on the previous night. Hux Brown's rhythm guitar, so vital, 'is' inaudible for much of the time and the bass and drums are too heavy. The highlight is 'Missing You', performed for the first time on this tour; mainly to calm people down. It's lovely, but for this bunch, Toots might as well have sung the fire regulations. Verdict: They had to really .work for their audience the night before and the results were far superior, because the people were more receptive. \ Kensington Stadium, Whangarei, Feb 4. A late start and a rather shaky one; as Toots was suffering from travel sickness. The sound crew did wonders with the acoustics, in a place designed for basketball. It must also be said here and now that support act Herbs are at a peak and are playing the best damn music of their career. You'd be a fool to miss them. Shows like this are seldom seen in the far North, and while the audience was receptive, it was initially not very demonstrative. Many remained seated and few danced, as though overawed by the occasion?lßßWm Toots, who wasn't looking well at,the.start, pulled himself together and ended up giving a personal best performance. Extras this time were a dangerous rendering of 'Two Timing', with an extended instrumental section, and the old ska hit 'Chatty Chatty'. The audience finally warmed up, especially the local dreads. Toots stripped himself to the waist,and danced himself silly with the help of some citizens, including the local leader of Black Power. He milked the end to Reggae Jam' a little but the applause from the audience was rapturous. Verdict: eight out of 10. As I talked with Toots, one of the greatest tragedies of recent times was unfolding in the news. Two million Ghanaians and other people classed as illegal aliens were being expelled from Nigeria, because that country's economy was being strained to the limit. They were going home in whatever way they could, in unbelievable conditions of starvation and filth, mostly to countries which did not want them, are just as poverty-stricken, and can:offer them no better future. HB "People who have a lotta money should really look into the matter and help the people who need help. That's what I say, when I. have a lotta money. I'm gonna do that. I just started to sing again after not singin' for a long time, but in those times when I used to sing, I didn't get a lotta money. But in the future, I'm gonna get a lotta money. I'm gonna do t'ings for myself and others. If I- was a rich man, I would do ; a lotta- t'ings for the people in Africa, people in England, in the States, everyone who need help. "Time will come when everyone will have charity. I believe that. All the younger generation, they.listen to reggae music, they gonna learn to have charity. Charity cover a multitude of sin." HIBHHHHIUI I woke up early one morning Then 1 went down to Spanish Town' To look for -a- friend of mine ' . ' Then we started t' have a little talk . - About everything ■ • . • • ' About the situation y y . And this is what he said ‘ Famine, famine, famine Famine on the land I say the cost of living getting so high, high, high...

Duncan Campbell