TOOTS & THE MAYTALS "ROOTS REGGAE' RARE 1974 JAMAICAN PRESSING DYNAMIC SOUNDS

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TOOTS & MAYTALS "ROOTS REGGAE" 1974 RARE JAMAICAN PRESS ON DYNAMIC SOUNDS LABEL

TOOTS & THE MAYTALS "ROOTS REGGAE" RARE ORIGINAL 1974 JAMAICAN PRESSING LABEL: DYNAMIC SOUNDS ~ DY-3343 RELEASED: 1974 EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: BYRON LEE PRODUCERS: WARRICK LYN, CARLTON LEE & NEVILLE HINDS RECORDING ENGINEER: CARLTON LEE RECORDED AT DYNAMIC SOUNDS STUDIOS ~ KINGSTON JAMAICA ORIGINAL JAMAICAN PRESSING MATRIX (SIDE A): (Lightly Etched) DY-3343 - A MATRIX (SIDE B): (Lightly Etched) DY-3343 - B
CONDITION: VINYL: VG+  JACKET: VG+ ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
I've been going thru my large vinyl record collection the past few months and pulling out some LPs that I thought that someone else would want for their collection. I've been collecting records for nearly 50 years and it's time to pass some of them on to the next generation of collectors.
After all, we are just temporary 'caretakers' of these musical gems until the next owner and next collection takes them in.
This week on EBay I'm offering up this nice, clean, rare, original, 1974 Jamaican pressing of Toots and the Maytal's 7th album "Roots Reggae", one of the early classic Jamaican roots/reggae albums that rarely comes up for sale here in the States.
This album "Roots Reggae" was recorded in late 1973 at Dynamic Sounds Studio, the legendary Kingston Jamaica recording studio founded and run by Jamaican producer and musician Byron Lee.
The studio, also home to the Dynamic Sounds Record label, was one of the best, modern, and most important recording facilities on the island at the time and was a popular hangout and crucial meeting hub for many of Jamaica's biggest reggae and ska music stars, including The Maytals, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, and many others.
The musicians that hung out and recorded at Dynamic Sounds helped create and establish most of the styles and sounds that make up modern reggae and all it's off-shoots, like ska, rocksteady, roots, and dancehall. 
In addition to the Maytals, although not listed on the record, the other musicians on this album include members of the Dynamic Studio House Band:
Bass: Jackie Jackson Drums: Winston Grennan Guitars: 'Hucks' Brown, Paul 'Dougie' Douglas Piano: 'Gladdy' Organ: Winston Wright Percussion: Denzil Liang ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The songs on this album include:
Country Road Time Tough Fever Revolution I Can't Believe In The Dark I See You Love Gonna Walk Out On Me Sailing On Take A Look In The Mirror ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
Frederick "Toots" Hibbert was a Ska and Roots Reggae pioneer, one of the genre's best and most prolific songwriters, and had an amazing singing voice and style. Original, smooth yet raw, and with just the right amount of soul and groove. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
THE HISTORY OF THE MAYTALS AND THE ALBUM 'ROOTS REGGAE'
Frederick "Toots" Hibbert, the son of strict Seventh-day Adventist preachers, grew up in rural Jamaica, where he was exposed to lots of gospel music, and first performed in a church choir. 
In 1961, the young impressionable 16 year old Hibbert, who was now an orphan, moved way from the pastoral rural hills to the Trenchtown section of Kingston.
Kingston at the time was experiencing an explosion of sensational new Ska music and "Toots" Hibbert landed right in it's epicenter, Trenchtown.
Once settled in Kingston, Hibbert soon met Henry "Raleigh" Gordon and Nathaniel "Jerry" Mathias in a local barbershop, and formed a working Ska trio, which by early 1962 had taken the name 'The Maytals'. Most Jamaican Ska groups in those early days, like the Mighty Diamonds, the Wailers, and the Heptones, were typically made up of 3 members, a vocal trio, who all shared taking turns singing lead.
For recording purposes, these Ska trios were typically augmented by various studio musicians, 'house musicians', that worked under specific producers at their own recording studios.
Unlike most Ska groups at the time, The Maytals took a different approach. Instead of sharing lead vocals, "Toots" became the front-man, singing almost all the lead vocals, with 'Raleigh' and 'Jerry' adding backing vocals and harmonies.
Before Ska and Roots became huge in Jamaica in the early 60's, the popular music on the Caribbean island was American Country & Western and soft, pop-sounding American R&B.
Toots soon developed his own unique, smooth but powerful, soulful vocal style, which didn't sound like anyone else on the scene, and his singing had an infectious spirit of fun and positivity.
Hibbert's smooth, gospel-derived, countified soul voice was perfectly suited for the transition from earlier American Country sounds to the smooth soulful Ska sounds popular in Jamaica at the time.
In the early 60's, when the Maytals were getting started, Jamaican radio, which was based on the conservative BBC style, refused to play the 'people's music', but the local Sound System DJ's and Selectors weren't under such tight regulation, and started to shift from American influenced country and rhythm and blues music to playing more socio-political aware music, with a harder rock steady beat, more local flavors and rhythms, and stronger messages in the lyrics that reflected the vast socio-economic changes taking place in the country.
The Maytal's early music was smooth, chill and relaxed compared with so much of other harder, grittier, socially conscious music of the era that was being made by the Kingston Sound Systems and the more 'urban' Ska groups.
A large part of The Maytal's broad popular appeal and early success was that Hibbert was a master songwriter and storyteller, with a keen understanding and feel for everyday Jamaican life.
Unlike many of his Jamaican contemporaries, who wrote about the struggles and socio-cultural unrest affecting the towns and cities of the small island nation in the sixties, Hibbert was a Jamaican country boy, a product of his religious, rural upbringing, and he based many of his earlier songs on common, relatable, real-life, day to day experiences of the Jamaican people, which made The Maytal's music very popular across a wide diverse audience.
The uniquely Jamaican sounds of Rock Steady, Roots and Reggae were soon heard emerging from the Sound Systems and the Maytals were right in the middle of it. They made many significant contributions to early Ska/Reggae.
By late 1962, the Maytals, hooked up with producer Clement "Coxsone" Dodd and his legendary Studio One house band, the Skatalites, and recorded their first album, "Presenting the Maytals - Never Grow Old".
Hibbert's smooth gospel-influenced voice, with close-harmony singing from his fellow Maytals, was very popular and an instant chart success, easily outselling and outperforming Coxsone Dodd's other new, up-and-coming Ska vocal trio, The Wailers. 
The Skatalites were committed to recording with other artists at Studio One, so The Maytals added their own instrumental backing band and musicians and toured constantly, hitting the popular club circuit.
After staying with producer Coxsone Dodd at Studio One for about two years, the group moved on to do some excellent sessions for Prince Buster, before teaming up with produced Byron Lee and recording their second album in 1965. 
The mid to late 60's saw an explosion of Soul and R&B music in America, which soon started influencing the bands in Jamaica.
Hibbert's smooth country-tinged soul vocals started to take on the sounds and styles of American southern soul artists, like Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Sam and Dave.
Many have referred to Toots Hibbert as 'The Jamaican Otis Redding'.
Under the production of the great Byron Lee, the Maytals recorded several early hits and easily won the first-ever 'Jamaican Independence Festival' Song Competition in 1966 with their original song "Bam Bam". They would go on to win that popular song contest several additional times.
The Maytals were at the top of the Jamaican popular music scene, but the band's success was suddenly interrupted in late 1966 when Hibbert was arrested and imprisoned for 18 months on drug possession charges.
Following Hibbert's release from jail towards the end of 1967, the band regrouped and began working with legendary Chinese-Jamaican producer Leslie Kong. A new era of chart hits and success followed.
The story goes that, while in prison, Hibbert had written the classic song "54-46 (That's My Number)" based on his actual assigned prisoner number.
Under Leslie Kong's guidance and production, the song became a huge hit. A long string of further hits, and 3 top-selling LP records, came along for the Maytals throughout the late sixties and early seventies.
The Maytals were in their 'classic' years with hits like "Do the Reggay", released in 1968, which was the first song to feature the word "reggae" in it, and helped give the new developing sound and genre its name.
“Time Tough” and "Pressure Drop" followed, then the band scored their first big international hit in 1970 with "Monkey Man".
Leslie Kong's feel for the music, his ear, keen production, and his  Beverley Records label, which liberally licensed out Jamaican music,  helped make The Maytals and their smooth ska/reggae sound a global international phenomenon.
After Leslie Kong's sudden death in 1971, the group continued to record with Kong's studio sound engineer, Warrick Lyn, and returned to using their former producer Byron Lee.
The group then won the 'Jamaican Independence Festival' Popular Song Competition for a third straight year with their song "Pomp and Pride".
In early 1972, with Frederick "Toots" Hibbert establishing himself as the clear star, frontman and songwriter of the group, Byron Lee officially changed the name of the band from 'The Maytals' to 'Toots and the Maytals'.
Later in 1972, the band, and reggae music in general, got a huge boost when they appeared in 'The Harder They Come', a film that featured fellow Jamaican Reggae artist Jimmy Cliff as a tough, street-smart,  'rude-boy'.
The Maytals appeared in a recording studio scene in the movie and contributed 2 songs to the film's soundtrack.
The film was a huge cult hit, and the soundtrack introduced both Reggae music and the Maytals to a much wider International audience, especially in America.
In America, The Maytals were still sort of overshadowed by Bob Marley and The Wailers, but in their home country of Jamaica and in England, Toots and the Maytals were already well established as the undisputed kings of Ska and Roots Reggae.
The hits kept coming with "Redemption Song" and 1973's "Funky Kingston", one of their best and most memorable songs which perfectly blended bouncy reggae and funk.
With "'Funky Kingston", the Maytals solidified their position as the biggest musical act in Jamaica, and the song, along with the continued spread of the 'Harder they Come' soundtrack album, had made them international superstars.
The Maytals had released six previous albums in Jamaica, all of which were quite successful, but little known outside the country. In 1974, they released this album, their 7th, 'Roots Reggae', on the Jamaican 'Dynamic Sounds' label.
This album. like all their records, was very popular in Jamaica but due to their recent rise in fame, this was one of their first Jamaican albums that got wider notice outside the country.
'Roots Reggae' included several hits, lots of soulful melodies with a bouncy reggae beat, and also included their fantastic, brilliant cover and 're-invention' of John Denver's classic '(Take Me Home) Country Roads', with Denver's “west Virginia” lyrics cleverly substituted with “west Jamaica”.
"Roots Reggae" got lots of praise and attention and helped spread the Maytal's great music to much of the world.
Music critic Lester Bangs described this album 'Roots Reggae' as "perfection, the most exciting and diversified set of reggae tunes by a single artist yet released".
The Maytal's music had always been especially popular in the UK, due to that country's large Jamaican population.
Chris Blackwell, owner of the UK's Island Records label, heard this album, fell in love with Jamaican music in general, and signed Toots and The Maytals, as well as several other Jamaican groups like 'Sly & Robbie', to his Island record label in 1975.
Blackwell then released the classic 'Funky Kingston" album, which contained the Maytal's previous hit song, as well as several tracks from their recent Jamaican releases "Roots Reggae" and "In the Dark", on his Island label in the UK and his Mango subsidiary in the US.
The new internationally released "Funky Kingston" album used the same artwork and jacket design as this previous 1974 Jamaican 'Roots Reggae' album, an illustrated cover meant to capitalize on the jacket of the 'Harder They Come' soundtrack album.
At first glance, most people mistake this 1974 Jamaican pressing of "Roots Reggae" for "Funky Kingston", but, despite looking similar, they are different albums, although with some crossover of material.
Chris Blackwell and Island Records went on to release three more best-selling Toots and The Maytals albums, and the hits kept coming with 'Reggae Got Soul' following after 'Funky Kingston' in 1976.
By the late 70's, Toots and The Maytal's fantastic earlier Jamaican music was finally being discovered by a new generation of UK fans. The Specials included "Monkey Man" on their 1979 debut album, the Clash released their cover of "Pressure Drop", and other UK bands released versions of Maytals' covers, leading to a new Ska and reggae-punk revival and the exciting, energetic '2-Tone' movement.
Toots and the Maytals toured throughout the world for many years, briefly disbanding in the early 1980s, but reforming and continuing to record and tour successfully thru the 1990's.
In 2005, the band won the Grammy award for best reggae album for 'True Love' an album of their classic songs re-recorded with various legendary musicians.
Frederick "Toots" Hibbert sadly passed away in September 2020. The band tried to carry on without their frontman, but Hibbert's estate blocked them from using the group's name, and 'Toots and The Maytals' fractured into various splinter groups who continue to tour, produce and record today as "formerly of..." incarnations of the band. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
This is a rare clean Jamaican pressing of Toots and The Maytals classic 1974 album 'Roots Reggae' on the Dynamic Sounds label.
One listen and it's easy to hear why this fantastic album is considered to be one of the better and most loved of all the classic Reggae albums to come out of Jamaica in the early 70's. ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
CONDITION: I tried to show good hi-resolution photos of the cover, labels and vinyl in my pictures.
I purchased this copy back in the mid 70's, 50 years ago, in Greenwich Village, on one of my regular vinyl digs in those early NY days, and have taken great care of it since.
VINYL: The vinyl is still fantastic. Clean and bright. No major dings, scratches or damage. There's a small superficial 'scuff' on one side which mostly involves the run out area and doesn't affect play. (see last pic), otherwise a beauty. It's been played a few times over the years, but always well taken care of. It still looks great. The Deadwax has the simple early faintly etched Jamaican matrix numbers.
I'll call it a conservative VG+, to keep everyone happy. I tried to show some close-up pictures of the vinyl to show how good it still looks. Still very clean and I'm sure you'll be happy with it.
I haven't messed with it or cleaned it, other than my trusty 'DiscWasher' brush, in 50 years. It has some light 'dust', paper specks and a fingerprint or two, and could use a good deep cleaning to make it even better looking and better sounding than it already is, and the small scuff may improve, but I'll leave that up to the winning bidder.
LABELS: This is pressed with the classic early yellow, Jamaican 'Dynamic Sounds' labels. The labels are clean and bright. No marks or damage. The spindle holes are still sharp and clean, suggesting minimal playing and my careful handling over the years.
JACKET: As you can see from my pictures, this still looks fantastic for a 50+ year old Jamaican pressing. Clean and bright with some mild edge wear from decades of being shifted around on my record shelves, and some mild early ring wear at the bottom, but not bad. 
This record has been sleeved and stored properly for decades, and, as you can see from my pictures, it's still quite nice for an early Jamaican pressing from 1974. A nice, clean, beautiful survivor. 
Add this classic Jamaican pressing of Toots and The Maytals 'Roots Reggae' to your vinyl record collection today.
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
** NOTE: I'm selling this rare Jamaican reggae record "AS IS" and "NO RETURN". It's rare, clean, sounds amazing and it's as described and I'm sure you'll be very happy with it.
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
I’m recently retired and downsizing and letting go some gems and rarities from nearly 45 years of vinyl record collecting. Check out the many other fantastic 45s and 33s coming soon to my page!
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THANK YOU for looking and reading if you got this far. I know I rambled on a bit, but can't help it. I have a passion for records and music, especially classic early Roots and Reggae.
I hope this listing was entertaining and informative. 
HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO YOU AND YOURS AND WE WISH YOU MUCH PEACE AND PROSPERITY IN THE YEAR TO COME!! ~~ JOHN