| Considering I’ve drifted to a desert island, I might as well have some island music. “Funky Kingston,” by Toots and the Maytals more than fits the bill.
First of all, many of you might ask why Bob Marley isn’t on my list — fair question (and I will write a Marley column at some point). Secondly, you might ask why this album makes it on my list: I’ll work backwards.
“Funky Kingston” is a “perfect” album meaning, there is not a bad cut on the whole thing. There isn’t a moment of filler.
From the first, relevant cut (“Time Tough”) to the final, feel-good “Sailin’ On,” there is nothing on the album that feels like the band has half-assed it.
The title cut would be enough to recommend this album: Toots sings like he has nothing left to lose and the band rocks out like it’s following Toots to hell, with no regrets or compunction. The thing is, Toots (Frederick “Toots” Hibbert) has a voice ripped from the church in the way Otis Redding or Sam Cooke had, full of salvation and damnation, all at the same time. There is nothing phony or fancy about the way Hibbert uses his voice, nor anything pretentious or showy in how his band, but the result is not only the greatest reggae album of all time but an album – of all albums — worth going to my island.
More than the fact that every cut is strong, awesome by themselves, there are several songs that are absolutely classic, as if the Beatles had gone reggae. The previously mentioned cuts, the title cut and “Pressure Drop” (on “The Harder They Come” soundtrack, one of the best reggae compilations, ever, and a really good movie) stand as some of the finest reggae, without argument.
Beyond that, the album includes two of the best covers ever recorded (not included in my previous column but both within my top 20) — “Louie, Louie” and, amazingly enough, making John Denver’s “Country Roads” not only palatable but listenable.
The amazing thing about the album is Hibbert’s voice, his power to transport, his transcendence beyond an Otis Redding or a Solomon Burke or even a Sam Cooke – he takes the tradition of “church voice” and twists it on its head and, in his way, makes it something new and exciting. However, it is his band that makes the whole thing divine, taking the rawness of his voice and making it manifest in completion.
It is, as I said, a perfect record.
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