Toots and the Maytals

Frederick "Toots" Hibbert with Raleigh Gordon and Jerry Matthias, formed in Kingston in the early 1960s and recording first for Coxsone Dodd, then Prince Buster and Byron Lee before the Leslie Kong sides that made them international. Theirs was the group whose "Do the Reggay" (1968) put the genre's name on a record label, whose Festival Song wins began with "Bam Bam" in the competition's first year, and whose "54-46 That's My Number" — written out of Hibbert's imprisonment on a ganja charge, the number being his prison number — became one of the most versioned rhythms in the music.

"Pressure Drop" and "Monkey Man" carried the same church-raised soul power into the reggae era and then out of it, covered by the Clash and the Specials and pulling Jamaican music into British punk. Hibbert won a Grammy with True Love (2005) and died on 11 September 2020.