English singer Mick Jagger, frontman of the rock band Rolling Stones, is expressing deep regret at the passing of Frederick ‘Toots” Hibbert.

Hibbert, 77, was the lead singer for Toots and the Maytals.

He died in the University Hospital of the West Indies in St Andrew on Friday night. He was admitted to the facility weeks ago after complaining of respiratory challenges.

“So sad to hear of Toots Hibbert’s passing. When I first heard Pressure Drop that was a big moment — he had such a powerful voice and on stage he always gave the audience his total energy. A sad loss to the music world,” Jagger, 77, wrote on Twitter yesterday.

Toots and the Maytals opened for the Rolling Stones on several tours in the United States and in Europe.

“He was a good friend of band. When we’re doing our opening set, Mick was always side-stage,” Jackie Jackson, Toots and the Maytals’s bass player, told the Jamaica Observer yesterday.

“It’s like every time we performed for them, it’s like the first time. That’s how enthralled they were. They couldn’t get enough of us as opening act,” he continued.

Like Toots and the Maytals, the Rolling Stones was formed in the 1962.

Rooted in blues and early rock and roll, the Rolling Stones started out playing covers and established themselves at the forefront of the British Invasion of bands that became popular in the United States in 1964, also being identified with the youthful and rebellious counterculture of the 1960s. The band found more success with their own material; songs such as (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction and Paint It Black became international hits, and Aftermath (1966) – their first entirely original album – has been considered the most important of the band’s formative records.

The Rolling Stones’s estimated record sales of 240 million makes them one of the best-selling music artists of all time. The band have been awarded three Grammy Awards and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004.

— Brian Bonitto