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Toots And The Maytals Win ‘Best Reggae Album’ At 2021 Grammys

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Toots Hibbert

Legendary Jamaican band Toots and the Maytals have won the 2021 Grammy for Best Reggae Album at the 63rd annual Awards.

The prestigious award is a fitting posthumous tribute to the band’s frontman Frederick ‘Toots’ Hibbert, who died last year on September 11 at the age of 77, two weeks after  Got To Be Tough, was released.  The 10-track album was also his first in 10 years.

The group’s album, Got To Be Tough, bested the category against The Wailers with One World, Buju Banton with Upside Down 2020 , Maxi Priest with It All Comes Back To Love, and Skip Marley with Higher Place . The award was handed out today, March 14, before the socially-distant telecast.

This was the band’s sixth Grammy nomination and second win in the Best Reggae Album category. They copped the award back in 2005 for their album, True Love.

“Very honored to have Got To Be Tough win the Grammy for Best Reggae Album!” the band said in a tweet today.  “A very special way to remember the legacy of Toots Hibbert! We are very grateful to everyone who helped make this happen.”

Toots was another unfortunate victim of the coronavirus and sadly, he died before being nominated. One of the instrumentalists who worked on the album, Earl ‘Paul’ Douglas, spoke with the Jamaica Gleaner following the nomination back in November 2020.

“To Toots, congratulations as usual; the nomination is deserving, and it’s such a wonderful feeling that after all this time, the band is still recognised and it is special,” Douglas said. “It would be awesome if we won, for it would be a good send-off for him, but I’m only left with the option of wishing that he could have been around to see.”

Before his passing Hibbert was considered a pioneer of Reggae. When he died at the age of 77, his career had already spanned six decades and he was credited for giving the genre its name after his song Do the Reggay was released in 1968.

He was also described Toots as a remarkable person. “I’m so sorry … Toots is such a special person, to me and to everyone who has had the chance to meet him and work with him because he treats everyone the same,” Douglas added.  “It is always about love and family – there’s something he would always do, that is, invite people on stage which is usually not permitted, and they could not wait to touch him or hug him – allowed to the life and energy brought to the stage.”

On December 8, 2020, on what have been his 78th birthday Trojan Jamaica, the label that released Toots and the Maytals’ album Got to Be Tough, premiered a video in the great musician’s honor. The video has clips of the making of Got to Be Tough, which included interviews with Hibbert.

As his family and friends continue to deal with the grief of losing their loved one, this Grammy is a fitting recognition of his invaluable contribution to Reggae.

The awards are being held in Los Angeles, California with some significant adjustments this year.   Singer Jhené Aiko served as host for the pre-telecast premiere ceremony where most of the night’s awards were actually handed out. The telecast will be hosted by Trevor Noah later tonight at 8:00 p.m. ET on CBS Television Network.

Last year, Koffee won the Best Reggae Album award for her Rapture EP.