And now, thanks to Momo, here are Toots and the Maytals on “Sweet and Dandy.”
Personal notes on this song are:
1. I was turned on to Toots and the Maytals by my entertainingly rakish Jamaican housemate, who had exactly seven girlfriends, one for each day of the week. He also turned me on to UNIX, Derrida, William Burroughs, and Clairol Herbal Essence Shampoo. It was an amusing household.
2. …While they were dancing in that barroom last night. “Barroom,” for “bar,” is also said in New Orleans. I was enchanted to discover this. “They are speaking like Toots and the Maytals,” I said.
3. There are barrooms like this one here. I and I were in one yet more exactly like this because of the accents, in Trinidad last summer. It had one of those super-tough-talking reggae DJ’s. I discovered that people really were speaking English, it was just that I could not understand it.
4. My favorite phrase in this song, however, is “plenty bottle of cola-wine.” I like this for the cola-wine and for the way in which the word “plenty” is used. They doubled it up in Trinidad all the time: “One roti, please, with plenty-plenty dhal.” We double up adjectives here in French, too. The little lady who delivered my Chinese food this evening said, “C’est chaud-chaud.”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
aw yeah! i grew upon bob marley, toots and the maytals, peter tosh and a few others! man i love these guys with a passion.
Give thanks for the Toots & The Maytals video. Something that may be lost on non-American is that Toots used to be more popular than Bob (especially in Jamaica) during the late sixties and early seventies. Toots is a great showman and for many if they had the choice to a Toots show or marley show, they would have gone to see Toots–fun all the way.
BTW, if I remember what Dr. Dathorne used to say, the doubling up for emphasis is a West African linguistic trait common among the Akan.
Great post!
Love this, profacero!
One of my (adult) sons and I share a love for Bob Marley/Toots and the Maytals/Rasta music in general, but my son is a lot more educated about these than I am, so far. He told me that the “I and I” thing is actually more like, the “I *in* I,” something like the inner eye, the true “I” inside of myself, the spiritual eye. Which I liked quite a lot.
Thanks again. 🙂
Heart
I got turned out to Toots and the Maytals and Jamaican music in general when the movie The Harder They Come played in the Telegraph theater in Berkely some time way back when. It had subtitles because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to understand the dialogue. I loved the movie, maybe because at that time the Telegraph was on its last legs, and there was a big hole in the roof. It rained the entire time the movie was playing, and the water just poured through the hole. We still got to watch the movie.
My other favorite song from those days was “Pressure drop”. I can’t find an early version, but this was an unexpected treasure: Toots still going strong on SNL with a great group of musicians (and Donald Trump doing the introduction!)
Pressure Drop on SNL