Solid, the debut album from OBessa, has been released. The eight-piece band comprises musicians who toured for many years with legendary singer Toots Hibbert, who died in September 2020.

Released on July 21, Solid has 15 songs, mainly covers of classic reggae and pop songs such as Freedom Street by Ken Boothe, Mother And Child Reunion originally done by Paul Simon and Desmond Dekker And The Aces’ Israelites.

Paul Douglas, drummer for OBessa, recorded and toured with Toots And The Maytals for over 45 years. In an interview with the Jamaica Observer, he described the Solid sessions as “Amazing!”

“I’m grateful to be still playing and recording with these talented musicians — Jackie Jackson (bass), Rad Bryant (guitar), Carl Harvey (guitar), Charles Farquharson (keyboards) and (the late) Hux Brown (guitar). We literally know how each musician thinks. There is a special chemistry that is felt when we play together….especially between Jackie Jackson, Rad Bryant and myself as we have been playing together for decades, in the studio as well as on the road,” he said.

Douglas, Jackson, Brown and Bryant made their names in the rock steady era of the mid and late 1960s. They help put a freshness to Alton Ellis’ Girl I’ve Got A Date, Dobby Dobson’s Loving Pauper and The Sensations’ Those Guys, which are standards from that era.

Simon recorded the original Mother And Child Reunion at Dynamic Sounds in Kingston, with Douglas, Jackson, Brown and Bryant. For the Solid versions, all reprised their roles.

There are two takes of Mother And Child Reunion on Solid — an instrumental and a vocal rendition featuring Jackson’s wife Karen Smith and daughter Courtney. Smith died from cancer in 2021.

Following Toots’ death at age 77, members of his band agreed to carry on his legacy by touring as The Maytals. When that was curtailed by threats of legal action by the Hibbert family, Douglas and Jackson decided to soldier on as OBessa.

Keyboardists Robbie Lyn and Leslie Butler, trumpeter Mickey Hanson, guitarist Willie Lindo, and saxophonist Dean Fraser also played on Solid.