THAT VOICE

A couple days ago a live clip of Toots and the Maytals from 2017 popped up on my feed. I hadn't seen live footage of Toots Hibbert in a long while so, what the hell, right? Sheeit! I was amazed at how well his voice has held up over the years. I mean it's not like he's Sinatra, his voice has always had a gospel-like roughness to it. Even with that, he was at it for roughly fifty years and he still sounded pretty much the same. This is good shit.

Here's a handful of early things (mid-sixties to early seventies) and a studio clip from the 1972 film The Harder They Come. My favorite part of that clip is the moment at 2:13 that Jimmy Cliff (in the yellow hat) has a lightbulb go off, thinking "Hey, I could do that." One last thing: As I often do when I see a video that's good, I check to see what other stuff is posted on the user's channel. The user that posted the live clip turned out to be Quincy Jones ("Qwest"). As I suspected, that dude has taste. There's a ton of good stuff. Dig it.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
The Maytals - Do the Reggay mp3 at Internet Archive Very early, if not first, use of the word "reggay" [sic] in song.
The Maytals - Monkey Man mp3 at Internet Archive
The Maytals - Pressure Drop mp3 at Internet Archive
Toots and The Maytals - 54-46 That's My Number mp3 at Internet Archive
Toots and  The Maytals - Funky Kingston mp3 at Internet Archive
Video:
Toots and the Maytals - Sweet and Dandy at YouTube From the film The Harder They Come 1972