Toots Hibbert

Born Frederick Nathaniel Hibbert on December 8, 1942, in May Pen, Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, he was raised in a family that sang in the church choir. After losing his parents while still young, he moved to Kingston in his teens, immersing himself in the ska scene emerging from the city's downtown record shops and sound systems.

In 1962 Hibbert formed the Maytals with Jerry Mathias and Henry Gordon, recording for Coxsone Dodd. The Maytals dominated Jamaica's Independence Festival Song Competition, winning in 1966 with "Bam Bam." Working with producer Leslie Kong in 1968, Hibbert wrote and recorded "Do the Reggay," the first commercial recording to use the word "reggae," effectively naming the genre.

The band's 1973 album "Funky Kingston" became an international breakthrough, and songs like "Pressure Drop" featured on the soundtrack of "The Harder They Come." Toots and the Maytals earned six Grammy nominations and won Best Reggae Album twice — for "True Love" (2004) and posthumously for "Got to Be Tough" (2021). In 2013 he was struck in the head by a bottle thrown from the crowd during a Virginia performance, sidelining him for years.

He died on September 11, 2020, at age 77, at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston, following a hospitalization widely reported as related to COVID-19. Hibbert is remembered as one of reggae's founding architects — the man credited with giving the genre its name.