The Goo 1
The Grape Vinyl Conor Farrell OTIS BLUE/OTIS REDD
ING SINGS SOUL (1965) - OTIS REDDING 60TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR In 1962, guitarist Johnny Jenkins was heading to Memphis to record for Stax Records - the label every aspiring soul and R&B artist in the South wanted to be on. Jenkins needed a driver, so he brought along his friend and occasional singer Otis Redding. Otis, well aware of the opportunity, hustled for a shot at an audition. The house band that day, Booker T. & the MG’s, hadn’t had a productive session with Jenkins and were packing up early. Otis, who’d been hassling drummer Al Jackson all day, finally wore him down. Jackson put in a word with guitarist Steve Cropper, and Otis was given his five minutes. Cropper would later say Otis was the only singer he ever worked with who could make the hairs on his arms stand up. That day in the studio was one of those times. When Otis began to sing These Arms of Mine, the room shifted and a remarkable, all-too-brief career sparked into life. After signing to Stax, moderate success came quickly, but his first two records were spun mostly on Black radio stations. He had yet to achieve crossover success. His next album would set that in motion. Recorded over a whirlwind weekend in July 1965, Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul, was laid down in just 46 24 hours with Booker T. & the MG’s and members of the Mar-Keys, and the Memphis Horns. The band even had to break early on Saturday night to play local gigs. Yet in that short burst of time, they made one of Soul music’s greatest albums. One of Otis’s compositions from the album, Respect, would become a massive hit for Aretha Franklin who transformed it into a feminist and civil rights anthem. “She took it away from me,” Otis later said, acknowledging that the song truly belonged to her. Otis’s take on the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction was another standout and a way of tipping the hat back after their covers of his songs, such as I’ve Been Loving You Too Long. Keith Richards later admitted he’d originally imagined Satisfaction with horns, and it was Otis’s version the Stones would draw from in their live sets for years to come. Other standouts on Otis Blue were Sam Cooke’s civil rights anthem A Change Is Gonna Come and the Temptations’ My Girl. His vocals, especially on the latter, were tender and sweet, but with a typical raw earthiness and an unshakable truth. Otis didn’t just interpret these songs - he inhabited them. When he sang “I was born by the river...,” on A Change is Gonna Come, you could hear the voice of generations pouring through him. Everything changed after Otis Blue was released. Unbeknownst to him, he already had a devoted fan base across the Atlantic. When he toured the UK in 1966 and ’67, he and his band were floored by the adulation. Returning to America with new confidence, Otis began to break through at home. His set at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 - performed to a crowd of mostly white, hippie youth was a triumph. In late 1967, Otis was writing new songs, including what would become his biggest hit, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” He immediately sensed this would be a smash, but the label was sceptical. Days after finishing it, he boarded a flight to Madison, Wisconsin, with his band, the Bar-Kays. Just four miles from their destination, the plane crashed into Lake Monona. Otis and all but one of the BarKays were killed. Dock of the Bay, released a month later, became America’s first posthumous No. 1. Otis was 26, his recording career barely three years old, and yet he remains not only one of soul’s greatest voices, but one of the alltime greats in music to this day.