Toots and the Maytals: Sweet and Dandy
[purchase]
Sweet and Dandy was just one of many songs to put Toots and the Maytals on the map -- after all, these are the guys who wrote the Clash classic Pressure Drop -- but the 1969 original of this song, which was the title cut to their second album with vocalist Toots Hibbert, holds a special place in the canon, having won them the popular vote at that year's Jamaica festival.
And despite (or perhaps because of) its relatively frothy vocals, which tell the story of a wedding gone awry, the song gets around. It was featured on the soundtrack to Jimmy Cliff's iconic 1972 crime film The Harder They Come, which brought reggae even further into the mainstream, and was even rerecorded with Phish frontman Trey Anastasio for True Love, a 2005 album on which Toots and the gang revisit their greatest hits songbook with the likes of Ben Harper, The Roots, No Doubt, and Eric Clapton.
It's funky in either form -- and a great jam to kick off a week with plenty of potential. Don't forget to come back early and often for a whole host of tunes with the title form "X and Y".
Toots and the Maytals: Sweet and Dandy (2005)
[purchase]
