Toots Hibbert is one of the pioneers of reggae — a singular artist who wrote and sang many classic hits. After a devastating injury, the man they call Fireball is back to reclaim his throne. Our new feature explores the trials and triumph of his career
Somewhere, not far off, I could hear music, muffled as if it were coming from behind walls: a heavy reggae bass line, clacking rhythm guitar, keyboards skidding across the top. It was a short, repeating section, booming through the hot, still air. After a while, vocals filled in the mix, rhythmic, intense:The voice sounded bruised but defiant, growling and also somehow joyous.
Since the injury, Toots has retreated to the studio, which he calls the Reggae Center, often seven days a week, birthday and Christmas included. “If I’m not in my bed, check the studio!” he says.Despite its official-sounding name, the Reggae Center is really just a dank, airless concrete apartment with sickly yellow walls and a trickle of A/C. A TV monitor above the recording console usually plays tennis; Toots is distracted by a Roger Federer match today. “Him a fireball,” Toots admires.
“Sometimes I think, ‘Who going to pay — how are they going to pay?’ ” Toots says, slouched over his guitar in the studio. “I’m not going to hurt anyone — I will make them pay musi-cally,” he says, stretching out the syllables. He moves in and out of Jamaican patois and, in certain moments, veers into a rhythmic, preaching cadence that calls on the Rastafarian teachings he lives by. “I feel angry. I want to hurt people.
Toots, who has been flirting with the skeptical female bar owner, chimes in: “We all drinking. And we all working. We always working. In our minds!” He admits that he feels a lot of pressure to relaunch his career at a time he would prefer to slow down and that he carries a burden of responsibility to support his family, which includes his wife of 39 years, Miss D, seven kids , along with grandkids, nieces, nephews, and others he’s informally adopted or taken care of over the years.
Everywhere we go, Toots gives. One afternoon during Christmas season we did the rounds in his black Lexus, distributing small bundles of cash to gas-station attendants and waiters and hotel staff, anyone he thought needed it. This is normal practice. “Sometimes my work, when I drive him, is just to give. We drive around and give money, or food, or medicine,” says Courtney. “Every day! Every time! Oh, my God! When the phone rings, it’s always somebody that wants something. He always help them.
We pull over by the open fields of Western Park, brown grass littered with trash. “I used to run up and down here all the time, it used to be so beautiful,” he remembers. “It used to be clean, rain would fall every day. It don’t fall every day now.” Birdy greets me warmly, holding my hand as we sit on the porch and talk about her life and her brother. She explains that she’s aware of how big a star Toots is, but as a strict Pentecostal her religion does not allow her to listen to the secular or Rastafarian-inspired messages of reggae, so she has never listened to Toots’ music or seen him perform live. “I love my brother,” Birdy says. “He always said he would be a prophet.
In 1962, Jamaica gained independence from the United Kingdom, and Kingston was swept up in hope and pride — and music. Rural kids like Toots flooded the city looking for work, and slums like Trenchtown became hotbeds for an evolving new sound that mixed gospel, soul, and traditional Jamaican mento with Rastafarian spirituality.
Toots recorded eight tracks that day, he recalls, including a rudimentary but soaring ska song, “Hello Honey” . “For that song, Coxsone gave me one patty,” says Toots. “I was very hungry, and I love a patty, and that’s what I got paid for my first song.” “Bob and I were friends for a long, long time,” says Toots, quietly. “Most people don’t know how close we used to be. We didn’t spend a lot of time together, but when we do see each other, it was meaningful. We talk a lot, we share thoughts over a lot of things. We figured and planned because we saw that this music was becoming bigger than we thought it could, bigger than us, as big as the world.
If anything good came of his time in prison, it’s a song: “54-46, That’s My Number,” his signature, like Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” or Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried,” which lightly fictionalizes Toots’ experience to create a sublime three-minute anthem against injustice that is one of reggae’s most exciting recordings ever and its first international hit.
“As a singer, he’s amazing,” adds Keith Richards, who has known Toots since the Seventies and recorded the track “Careless Ethiopians” with him for Toots’ 2004 duets record,which also featured Raitt, Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson, and Jeff Beck. “His voice reminds me very much of the timbre of Otis Redding. When you hear him do ‘Pain in My Heart,’ it’s an uncanny resemblance. I think he knows himself. He’s his own man and he knows the contribution he’s made, which is why he’s still around.
He says he woke up happy this morning, sipped some sorrel juice his wife made, then hit the gym, where he danced and boxed with a trainer. On the way home, things started to go downhill, as the phone started ringing and he began the daily frustrations with agents, managers, lawyers, and publishers to keep the Toots machine moving forward.
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