OTIS REDDING

(important work in color)

1964: Pain in My Heart (1-1-64) * Apollo Saturday Night (Various Artists) (2-64). 1965: The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads (3/65) * Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul (9-15-65). 1966: The Soul Album (4-1-66) * The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul (10-15-66). 1967: King and Queen (with Carla Thomas) (3-16-67) * Otis Redding Live in Europe (7-10-67) * The Stax Soul Revue in London (Various Artists) (7-10-67) * The Stax Soul Review in Paris (Various Artists) (7-10-67) * History of Otis Redding (11-9-67 compilation). 1968: Soul as Sung by Otis Redding and Little Joe (with Little Joe) (1/68) * The Dock of the Bay (2-23-68) * The Immortal Otis Redding (6-14-68 compilation) * In Person at the Whisky-a-Go-Go 1966 (10/68) * Soul Christmas (various artists) (11-8-68). 1969: Love Man (6-20-69). 1970: Tell the Truth (7-1-70) * Otis Redding/Jimi Hendrix Experience: Historic Performances Recorded at the Monterey International Pop Festival (8/70). 1972: The Best of Otis Redding (8-23-72). 1982: Recorded Live (Previously Unreleased Performances) (3/82). 1985: The Best of Otis Redding (10-14-85). 1986: The Legend of Otis Redding. 1987: The Otis Redding Story (7/87). 1992: Remember Me (4-19-92). 1993: Good to Me (recorded live at the Whiskey a Go-Go, Vol. 2). * The Definitive Otis Redding (box set).

Otis Redding was born in Dawson, Georgia, Sept. 9, 1941.

Otis Redding was a vivid performer. Craft and style went into making his music urgently evocative. Many of his songs exist in the "now." The situations happen before your eyes. When Carla Thomas calls Otis a "Tramp" and suggests that he doesn't have twenty-five cents, Otis stops and recites a list (you can almost see him counting on his fingers): "I got six Cadillacs, five Lincolns, four Fords, six Mercurys, three T-Birds, Mustang..." On "Open the Door" Otis cries out, "running around is killing me" and you hear him frantically knocking on a door, yelling "let me in, let me in, let me in." The most famous example is when a homesick Otis sits on a dock, watches the tide, whistles at the water after relating a tale of loneliness.

On "Cigarettes and Coffee," the band evokes a depleted, but satisfied, after-hours sexual situation. Otis sings, "It's early in the morning about a quarter to three; I'm sitting here talking with my baby." A testament of love is stated, Otis gets to the bridge and suggests "If you would take me under consideration/Walk down this aisle with me/Oh I would love it, I would just love it darlin'." They talk a little, smoke a little, and drink more coffee. Otis could savor a moment, an emotion, like few other artists. Every time he says "wait a minute, wait a minute," he re-captures your attent ion. He's a good-natured performer, a bit of a ham, constantly aware of the listener, constantly interacting. He knows you're singing along on "Fa Fa Fa Fa" so he gives you your own space. He easily outdoes the aw-ful-ly slo-woah Frank Sinatra on a tune they both tried on, Sinatra casually running through "Try a Little Tenderness," blowing the melody along softly, turning it into a romantic sham. Redding mined the song for dramatic character, and reached passionate depths as he testified about the things people want, but will never, ever, possess, and how best to lighten a load under the circumstances.

Otis wrote odes to fidelity. Some are reciprocal, but many face down troubled relationships at their most extreme. Otis is often loyal to the point of humiliation. A single-minded sense of conquest and unending allegiance kept his songs truthful in ways that might not have been recognized during the summer of love. They also avoid the issues of sexist condescension and ill will that run through a lot of sixties' pop music. Redding rose above his time with an uncompromised romanticism.

Redding's musical intellect ignited when it connected with Booker T and the MGs. Booker and band formed the crux of what is known as the legendary Memphis Sound. The group o f musicians included Steve Cropper (guitar), Duck Dunn (bass), Al Jackson (drums), Booker T. Jones (keyboards), Wayne Jackson (trumpet), Andrew Love (sax), Joe Arnold (sax), plus help from Floyd Newman (baritone sax), Isaac Hayes (keyboards) and several o ther important musicians. Long-lived and prolific, the core band was responsible for some of the best tunes released in the sixties. They were the secret forces behind the glorious Stax-Volt record label, and unlike the secret forces over at Motown , they received credit on almost every record they made.

Al Jackson belonged to the drum school that includes Ringo Starr and Charlie Watts. Back beats you can't lose. Every drum fill sounds perfectly apt and perfectly catchy. Duck Dunn's percolating bass drive was pitched at an impressive frequency and had a hipster's bounce. Steve Cropper's beautiful guitar tone, interactive wit and sublime restraint fleshed out the sound. Booker T. Jones floated in and out with waves of color. And no other horn section in pop history has come up with as many solid hooks.

In the early/mid sixties, the Memphis Sound was worshipped by those in the know, their influences spreading quickly beyond the boundaries of Memphis and segregated playlists. Keith Richards wrote "Satisfaction" wi th Stax-Volt horn lines in mind. Aretha Franklin spent a very short time with the Southern musicians, but the heavy burst of rowdy songs that followed typified her greatest era. Compared to Stax/Volt, Motown music was less purely r&b, less forceful. Motown cut the rough stuff out of its r&b backing the songs with heavy orchestration and forfeiting much of what was so exciting about the format was an attempt to please a white pop market.

Although the Memphis players backed many of the Stax/Volt artists in the studio, Otis Redding was the group's primary catalyst. Otis was a workaholic dynamo whose soul was so full of life and joy that his r&b styling came close to spilling over into pop, top-forty airplay. His intentions could not be held back, could not be contained. He had a pop sense of r&b - meaning lots of hooks, lots of humor, lots of drama. His untimely death in a plane crash in December 1967 cut short a whirlwind of a career. He was 26 years old. His six studio albums before his death are explosive examples of r&b form. Janis Joplin described his style in reference to her own: "I sing with a more demanding beat, a steady rather than a lilting beat. I don't riff over the band. I try to punctuate the rhythm with my voice. That's why Otis Redding was so great. You can't get away from him. He pounds on you; you can't help but feel him."* His interpretations were of the off-the-cuff, throwaway variety of many of the best interpreters - quick takes and very little formality leading to new revelations. If there is a shortcoming to the style it is in the impulsiveness of the bursting energy. Otis alluded to it himself in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine: "At Stax the rule is: whatever you feel, play it. We cut everything together - horns, rhythm, and vocal. We'll do it three or four times, go back and listen to the results and pick the best one. If somebody doesn't like a line in a song, we'll go back and cut the whole song over. Until last year, we didn't even have a four-track tape recorder. You can't overdub on a one-track machine. Like yesterday, we cut six songs in five hours for my album with Carla. They were perfect songs, and they'll all be in the album."** Interesting songs, yes; perfect songs, well let's just say some of the rush is evident. One of the brightest spots on the very nearly perfect compilation Definitive Otis Redding can be found on the song where it's obvious there's an upgrade in the studio recording equipment, where the pumping leanness of the old system gives way to a warm, full-sounding envelopment. But Otis is right: fancy recording techniques really didn't make that much difference. Even though Otis Blue, Dictionary of Soul and the posthumous Tell the Truth are the strongest works, all of Redding's albums are enjoyable testaments to the talents of this Georgia dynamo.

*Joplin quote is from The Rock Revolution , by Arnold Shaw. Macmillan 1971.

**Rolling Stone - January 20, 1968

One of the funniest and most bizarre takes (negative) on Otis Redding can be found in Nik Cohn's hilariously misguided Rock From the Beginning (Stein and Day -1969).

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