Sean Paul Regrets Not Having Collab With Late Toots Hibbert: “I Cried Like A Baby”
Dancehall superstar Sean Paul has revealed that he wept bitterly after learning of the news of Reggae pioneer Toots’ death, in September last year, and also regrets that they had never made a song together.
Toots died on September 11 last year, at age 77, due to complications relating to COVD-19, leaving behind his wife and seven of his eight children.
In a recent interview with The Independent, Sean Paul said that as a youth, he had been introduced to the music of Toots and the Maytals, Bob Marley and Bunny Wailer by his parents, and his death “felt it like a death in the family”.
“I cried like a baby about Toots,” Paul said of the Reggae legend, who, in 2010, was named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the 100 Greatest Singers of all time.
“He was one of my mom’s favorite artists from the early 60s. She always marvelled and said, ‘Look at his voice! Look how he’s holding his microphone way out from his chest and you can still hear him amazingly!’” the Temperature artist recounted.
In expounding on the magnitude of his regret about not having a collab with Toots, the Grammy award-winning artist said that it was always a momentous occasion whenever he encountered Toots.
“When I would see him on tour in Europe, he would always embrace me and express [a wish] to do a song with me,” Sean Paul said.
“We never got to do it, so that’s the reason I cried. He’s someone who I really revered as a person. When you spoke to him, you felt nothing but joy.”
Born in May Pen, Clarendon, on December 8, 1942, Toots was the youngest of 14 children for his father and was given the name Fredrick Nathaniel Hibbert.
As a child, Toots sang in his church choir and in the 1950s, moved to Kingston. There, he teamed with Henry “Raleigh” Gordon and Nathaniel “Jerry” Mathias in 1962 and formed The Maytals, later adding instrumentalists Jackie Jackson, Hux Brown, Rad Bryan and Paul Douglas.
Toots, who has the distinction of scoring 31 No. 1 singles in Jamaica, has been credited for officially coining the word Reggae. His band’s 1968 single Do the Reggay, was the first to ever use the word Reggae, officially giving the music genre an identification, before it was introduced to the rest of the globe.
Toots and the Maytals copped two GRAMMY awards over the years – the 2021 Best Reggae Grammy Album Award for Got To Be Tough and True Love back in 2004, which featured re-recorded versions of their earlier hits, in collaboration with some of the world’s biggest names in music, including Willie Nelson, Eric Clapton, No Doubt, and Shaggy.
Toots and his band were responsible for some of the most iconic songs in Reggae history, including Pressure Drop, Sweet And Dandy, 54-46, Beautiful Woman and Monkey Man which was the group’s first international hit back in 1970.
Toots’ last major live performance was at Rebel Salute in January 2020. His last public performance was at the Jamaica National Festival Song competition on July 26, 2020.