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Critic's Review
Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
From the Roots was Toots & the Maytals' fourth album, released by Trojan following the group's signing to Island Records in 1973. The original album was cobbled together from odds and ends of tracks recorded between 1969 and 1970 for Leslie Kong's Beverley's label, and while it doesn't contain any of the more famous Kong-produced cuts ("Pressure Drop," "Sweet and Dandy"), it still exhibits the Maytals' trademark Jamaican version of gospelfervor, led by lead singer Toots Hibbert's barn-burning vocal style. This reissue includes the original song set, and adds alternate takes and other oddities (like the slower 1971 re-recording of "One Eyed Enos"). Arguably this album, along with its Kong-produced predecessor, 1970s Monkey Man, contains the best and most explosive tracks in the Maytals' discography, and compilations that reshuffle the two albums in different combinations are common in the record bins. This reissue has great sound, and while it isn't as strong a single release as Monkey Man, it is still worth the admission price to hear the frenetic, revival meeting energy of cuts like "Gold & Silver" and "Thy Kingdom Come," the hammer-down re-imagining of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance," or the furious Stax-like drive of "Funky Funky."
