| BY HOWARD CAMPBELL— Observer senior writer— | 2 |
TOOTS Hibbert and David Heron played to different audiences. One was a pop music legend, the other is one of the faces of contemporary Jamaican theatre.
On March 14, Toots and his group, The Maytals, won the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album with Got to Be Tough. Last October, Heron narrated the podcast A Reggae King Rises Again, based on a Rolling Stone magazine feature on the singer/songwriter who had died one month before, at age 77.
Heron said the Grammy win, the second for the group, was fitting.
“It was something I know that I, and many others, had hoped and prayed for as a fitting curtain call to a truly legendary career. Even the album title, Got to Be Tough, is completely emblematic of the man and musician Toots was — a scrapper, a fighter, a warrior, always determined to stand up for himself, his family and friends, his music and his principles,” Heron told the Jamaica Observer.
Got to Be Tough was released in August by Trojan BMG Records, just days before Toots died of COVID-19-related complications. Rolling Stones Editor Jason Fine had interviewed him for an extensive feature that was published in the magazine’s September issue.
For the podcast of the same title, management at the monthly publication partnered with Audm, a subsidiary of the New York Times that transforms feature articles into podcasts. They preferred a Jamaican to present it and Heron was recommended, based on his artistic background.
“They wanted someone who could slide easily from standard American English to an authentic Jamaican dialect, since Toots and many of his Jamaican family and friends are quoted in the piece as well, and they wanted authenticity,” Heron explained.
Heron, who lives in New York, said he has been a fan of Toots and The Maytals since hearing their 1970 festival song winner Sweet And Dandy as a boy.
In the 1990s, Heron came of age as writer/director of hit plays such as Against His Will and Ecstasy. In New York, he has appeared in numerous productions including Leonora, and directed a 40th anniversary edition of Easton Lee’s The Rope and the Cross.
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