Toots & Maytals - Funky Kingston / In the Dark (Dlx)
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Toots & MaytalsBrand: Funky
Edition: Music CD
Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2003-03-25
Music Label: Island
Product features:
- TOOTS & THE MAYTALS FUNKY KINGSTON IN THE DARK
- Sit Right Down
- Pomp and Pride
- Louie, Louie
- I Can't Believe
- Redemption Song
- Daddy's Home
- Funky Kingston
- It Was Written Down
- Got to Be There
- In the Dark
- Having a Party
- Time Tough
- I See You
- Take a Look in the Mirror
- Take Me Home Country Roads
- Fever
- Love's Gonna Walk Out on Me
- Revolution
- 54-46 Was My Number
- Sailing On
- Pressure Drop
Free Music Notes for Funky Kingston / In the Dark (Dlx)
Free Music Review: Two reggae classics restored to their original glory
Hit: 5 Stars
Having debuted as a ska outfit in the early 60s, the Maytals eventually found success in mid-decade via a Jamaican song festival competition (at which their song "Bam Bam" took first place), and a string of successful singles recorded with legendary producer Leslie Kong. Following Kong's untimely death in 1971, the Maytals found themselves renamed Toots & The Maytals and recording with Kong's former arranger and sound engineer, Warwick Lyn. The resulting pair of albums, 1972's "Funky Kingston" and 1973's "In the Dark," are perhaps the best -- and certainly the most accessible -- albums recorded by one of reggae's artistic pillars.
"Funky Kingston" includes signature songs like "Pomp and Pride," "Redemption Song" and the title track, along with the band's hear-it-to-believe cover of Richard Berry's "Louie Louie" and a spellbinding take of Ike & Tina Turner's "I Can't Believe." Frederick "Toots" Hibbert sings with a soulfulness unmatched in reggae, equal parts Otis Redding and Ray Charles, and with bandmates who can provide both call-and-response gospel and sweet harmony singing. Instrumentally, the band pulses with deep, hypnotically grooved tracks, crackling with the kinetic energy of their early years.
"In the Dark" strips the band's sound of the overdubbed horn section, and digs deeply into their reggae roots. Hits include the title track, along with "Time Tough," and the prison-time inspired (and James Brown styled) "54-46 Was My Number." The Maytals second hear-it-to-believe-it cover, this time reworking John Denver's "Take Me Home Country Roads," is a marvel of reggae soul. It's nearly impossible to remember Denver's treacly original after spinning the Maytals' rendition.
This two-fer brings together both albums' original U.K. track listings and running orders for the first time on a U.S. release. In contrast, the 1976 U.S. issue of "Funky Kingston" distilled the ten tracks of "Funky Kingston" and twelve tracks of "In the Dark" (plus "Pressure Drop" from the soundtrack of "The Harder They Come") to a scant ten track total. With the inclusion of "Pressure Drop" as a bonus on this collection, listeners weaned on the U.S. original can restore its original track order by programming 12, 10, 7, 17, 3, 2, 9, 15, 21, 20. Not that you're likely to want to after listening to these albums in their original glory.
Bob Marley may have become the prophet's face of reggae, but these two classic albums demonstrate plain and simple: Toots & The Maytals were as large a part of the music's soul as anyone. Period.
Funky Kingston / In the Dark (Dlx) Poster
TOOTS & THE MAYTALS FUNKY KINGSTON IN THE DARKAlternative Rock Music CDs
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