Toots Hibbert

Frederick Nathaniel 'Toots' Hibbert was born on 8 December 1942 in May Pen, in the parish of Clarendon, Jamaica, and formed the vocal group the Maytals in 1961 with fellow Kingston natives Nathaniel 'Jerry' Matthias and Raleigh Gordon.

The Maytals became one of the most successful groups in Jamaican music history, winning the inaugural Jamaica Festival Song Competition and racking up more Jamaican number-one singles than any other artist, including Bob Marley, while Hibbert's gospel and soul-influenced vocal style drew comparisons to Otis Redding.

In 1968, while recording a novelty song about a passing dance craze, Hibbert's pronunciation of a Jamaican slang term became 'reggae', giving the emerging musical genre its name through the Maytals' single 'Do the Reggay', one of the first recordings to use the word.

Despite being jailed for 18 months in 1966 on a marijuana possession charge Hibbert maintained was fabricated, he turned the experience into one of his most enduring songs, '54-46 (That's My Number)', referencing his prison number, and the group signed to Island Records as Toots and the Maytals, releasing the influential albums Funky Kingston and Reggae Got Soul.

Hibbert continued recording and performing for nearly six decades, winning Grammy Awards for Best Reggae Album and collaborating with artists including Keith Richards, Willie Nelson and Amy Winehouse; he died in Kingston in 2020 at age 77, having helped bring Jamaican music to a global audience.