Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 57

Otis Redding Otis Blue The definitive Southern soul album.

Оглавление

Record label: Atlantic

Produced: Jim Stewart

Recorded: Stax Studios, Memphis; April and July 1965

Released: September 15, 1965

Chart peaks: 6 (UK) 75 (US)

Personnel: Booker T Jones and Isaac Hayes (k); Steve Cropper (g); Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn (b); Al Jackson Jr (d); Earl Sims (bv); Wayne Jackson, Gene ‘Bowlegs’ Miller (t); Andrew Love (ts); Tom Dowd (e)

Track listing: Ole Man Trouble; Respect; A Change Is Gonna Come; Down In The Valley; I’ve Been Loving You Too Long; Shake; My Girl; Wonderful World; Rock Me Baby; Satisfaction; You Don’t Miss Your Water

Running time: 32.54

Current CD: Warners 8122732532 adds: Immortal and Pain In My Heart albums

Further listening: The comprehensive 4-CD box sets Otis! The Definitive Otis Redding or Dock Of The Bay – The Definitive Collection.

Further reading: Sweet Soul Music (Peter Guralnick, 1998); Otis Redding (MOJO Heroes) (Geoff Brown, 2002); www.otisredding.com

Download: iTunes

It is rare – and usually accidental – for a ’60s soul album to sit well as an entity, as a cohesive statement by the singer about his art. But Otis Blue, Redding’s third album, subtitled Otis Redding Sings Soul, is exactly that. His customary modus operandi was to arrive at the studio with an album’s worth of ideas, often worked out in collaboration with guitarist Steve Cropper, rehearse for a day or two and then cut the tracks fast. For Otis Blue he had only three originals. Respect, which he said took a day to write, 20 minutes to arrange and one take to record, the ballad I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, co-written with Jerry Butler, and Ole Man Trouble, the churning soul-blues driven by Cropper’s guitar, which opens the album.

Redding started work on the album in April 1965, three months after the death of his great idol, Sam Cooke, hence the three cover versions (Shake, Wonderful World, A Change Is Gonna Come). Cooke purists demur as to the quality of these covers but they clearly illustrate Otis’s ability to grab a song and, in the context of the album, make it his alone. He covers the Smokey Robinson-penned Temptations hit My Girl, William Bell’s You Don’t Miss Your Water, the Solomon Burke soul-gospel hit Down In The Valley and B. B. King’s Rock Me Baby: a catholic trawl. But the most audacious cover version for his core black market was Satisfaction, the Rolling Stones’ hit. For years white rock bands had usurped black hits. Here was a rare instance of a black artist turning the tables. Cropper suggested the song while Otis was out of the studio; the MGs and Memphis Horns worked up an arrangement. When Redding heard the song he didn’t care for it but tried using ‘a lot of words different – I made them up.’

‘There were no planning sessions, we just went in and did it,’ the Memphis Horns’ trumpeter, Wayne Jackson, recalled. ‘All the really great stuff at Stax was done quick, a big group effort. It would start with bones that somebody brought and the muscle and sinew and flesh and skin would be put on it and the monster would rise and live!’ Otis Blue took just two days to record.

The Mojo Collection

Подняться наверх