Once upon an afternoon twentysomething years ago, I was flipping methodically through the cutout bin in the 28th Street K-Mart record department.

"Funky Kingston." I stopped.

"Toots and the Maytals."

Hmm. That sounded familiar, somehow. Hadn't they played here in Boulder? Yes. I remembered floating homeward down The Mall after yet another late night in smoky barrooms, being stopped by the sounds of music and revelry pouring from the upstairs windows of (Remember?) the Good Earth. It wasn't too clear, but it sounded like the crowd was having an awfully good time. All I knew was that "Toots and the Maytals" was playing there that night. I assumed they were a Motown group, and not a must-see for a hip, psychedlic folkie rolling stoner like me. Surely. Resisting the pull of curiosity, I drifted off bedward.

So, when I later stood in the K-Mart record department I studied that album jacket closely. "Kingston" as in Jamaica, and as in "Kingston Trio" (which back in my espresso-soaked high school days was the first indication that the times they would soon be a' changin'). But this was "funky," not "folky," Kingston. I recalled a longhaired Boulder Bozo pal who said he'd seen Toots and the Maytals, but he offered no description beyond a knowing smile. "Reggae," the record jacket called it. Whazzat? I took a chance and carried Funky Kingston home from K-Mart and put it straight onto the Dual semi-auto turntable I still own. I don't know what I expected to come out of those speakers, but what did come out had me in about 20 seconds, it had me and it possesses me still. The sound was familiar, and yet it wasn't. It was funky, certainly, and it was soul and it was R & B, and something else, too, straight out of church. There were other flavors I would later come to recognize as African, as Carribbean. And floating above it all was the rough yet sweet and supple voice of Toots Hibbert. Since Funky Kingston I've bought a couple of hundred reggae albums, but none I like more.

Still later, I learned that back in 1961, while I listened to the Kingston Trio, absorbed On the Road and got ready to graduate from high school, a teenaged Frederick "Toots" Hibbert had left the rural Jamaican town of May Pen for Kingston, where Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff and many other young performers struggled for recognition in the turbulent Jamaican recording industry. There, he formed the Maytals with fellow church choir singers Ralphus "Raleigh" Gordon and Nathaniel "Jerry" Matthias. At a time when most Jamaican groups tried to imitate American music, Toots sang in a broad, Jamaican patois and introduced distinctively Jamaican social and cultural matters into the music. The Maytals' 1968 single "Do the Reggay" introduced the term that would come to define a genre. In the 1972 film, "The Harder They Come," The Maytals are seen in the recording studio singing "Sweet and Dandy." Also on the soundtrack is "Pressure Drop," later covered by the Clash, and probably the most widely-recognized Maytals song.

In 1975, Toots and the Maytals signed with Island records and toured in the U.S. for the first time, opening for the Who. After a string of great albums, Island dropped Toots' contract following the critically-acclaimed 1988 "Toots in Memphis" album, preferring to concentrate on the more dreadlocked reggae that had come to the fore and content to profit from the steady sales of the existing Maytals lps. In 1996, Island released "Time Tough," a two-disc anthology spanning the entire Maytals era. Recently, Toots has started to quietly release his own CDs, the most recent being "Ska Father."

Though you won't hear Toots and the Maytals on the radio, or see them on MTV, they've continued to tour seemingly almost without interruption. No special publicity is needed; when legends beckon the faithful come. Since my day of revelation over two decades ago, the Maytals have returned to Boulder many times, and I've never missed a show. When they played the Fox Theater (In 1961 the Fox was a movie theater) on July 20 and 21, [2001] as another song from Funky Kingston says, I "Got to Be There." Oh Yeah.

-The Old Boulder Bozo

[The OBB was there, and here is the I-witness account].

The Maytals made a disastrous appearance at something called the One Love Festival [review of this show in Chicago] at the Denver's blasted Fillmore Auditorium on May 30, 2002. Toots was incensed when Fillmore management cut his set to 20 minutes so this benighted barn could shut down by 9 pm.

On April 10, 2003, Toots returned to the Fox Theater, and in this more hospitable setting, gave his usual terrific show. He continues to tour and is in fine voice.