Tribute to Toots Hibbert with Johnnie Walker The first Toots and the Maytals album released and distributed by Chris Blackwell's Island Records was Funky Kingston. Music critic Lester Bangs described the album in Stereo Review as "perfection, the most exciting and diversified set of reggae tunes by a single artist yet released." Chris Blackwell had a strong commitment to Toots and the Maytals, saying "I've known Toots longer than anybody – much longer than Bob Marley]. Toots is one of the purest human beings I've met in my life, pure almost to a fault.[ In 1970, the band first charted overseas with “Monkey Man” reaching No. 47 in Britain.
Hibbert also appeared in the groundbreaking Jamaican film The Harder They Come, in which his band sings "Sweet and Dandy".[18] The film's soundtrack included the Maytals' 1969 hit song "Pressure Drop". The Harder They Come features fellow musician and actor Jimmy Cliff in the leading role as Ivan, a character whose story resembles Hibbert's.
