Toots and the Maytals: Light Your Light

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Bill Carbone wrote in the New Haven Advocate: "Toots’ 1968 single 'Do the Reggay' is heralded as the first published use of the term now synonymous with Jamaican music. … Toots, now in his mid-60s, continues to perform the lengthy, almost religious revival–energy sets for which he became famous. Toots continues to record as well. He won a Grammy in 2005 for True Love. … Light Your Light … opens with 'Johnny Coolman' … featuring Derek Trucks on slide guitar. Bonnie Raitt sings a duet with Toots on 'Premature,' a ditty about an underage girl set to a classic Maytals country-reggae groove. The album is also strikingly modern at times. 'Love So Strong' sets a typical reggae chord progression above a shuffling, Puerto Rican–inspired reggaeton groove. The juxtaposition of acoustic guitar, synth and monotonously thumping bass behind Toots’ tough lyrics on 'Don’t Bother Me' sounds like a slice of new school reggae producer Don Corleone’s empire; it could be comfortably spun between Beenie Man and Capleton sides at a dance" ("Sharing Punches, Bombs and Toots," 4/3/08).