Monkey Man

Recorded in Kingston, Jamaica during the 1969–70 Leslie Kong sessions at Dynamic Sounds, with Toots Hibbert on lead vocal and the Maytals’ core band. The track came out of the same run of recordings that generated the group’s late-1960s and early-1970s Jamaican hits. Released as a Leslie Kong production and issued in Jamaica on Beverley’s, it became one of the Maytals’ defining early reggae singles. It reached No. 47 on the UK Singles Chart, giving the group a major British breakthrough. The song became a standard of the reggae and ska repertoire and was later covered or reinterpreted by the Specials, Amy Winehouse, and No Doubt. Its continued circulation through covers kept it among the Maytals’ best-known songs.