Many people think that the name Mick Jagger is spelled Mick Yagger with an Y, and sometimes Mick spell it this way himself.
Well, around 1966 and 1967 Mick Jagger spent a lot of time at cool clubs in London. Very close were the hottest music clubs for West Indian immigrants. The loud and jangling Jamaican music — ska and rocksteady — could be heard in the neighborhoods all night long. Mick Jagger often visited these clubs and he liked the music (ten years later he recorded the reggae hit “Don’t Look Back” together with Peter Tosh).
Sometimes there were live music at the Jamaican clubs in London. Toots & the Maytals, who were the hottest band in Jamaica 1967, often played in London. Mick Jagger met Toots Hibbert and they become good friends. Next year, 1968, Toots Hibbert wrote a rocksteady song for his band The Maytals, and he named this big hit (in Jamaica) “Do The Reggay“. This was the first time the word “reggae” was mentioned, only spelled a little different.
As you can see, the word “reggay” is the word “yagger” backwords . Toots named the rocksteady hit after his good friend Mick “Yagger”. Soon afterwards the rocksteady music became slower with a more accentuated backbeat, and the music was called “reggay“, quickly changed to “reggae“.
People often speculate that the word “reggae” comes from “regular music” or from the slang word “streagge“, but now you know the truth. Verdad?
Etiketter backwords, Jamaica, London, Mick Jagger, music, Peter Tosh, ragga, Reggae, reggay, rocksteady, Rolling Stones, roots, ska, spell, spelling, Toots & the Maytals, Toots and the Maytals, truth, truuth
