Black History Music Pt. 28
In celebration of Black History Month, the Ear Candy Update intends to celebrate landmark recordings by black artists that have shaped the collective consciousness, mentality, and sense of cool the world over. Next, Otis Redding's "Otis Blue."
A clinic.
He redefines his genre right here. At times he pleads, he insists, he flatly declares. All with a previously unheard urgency that took soul as a sense of musicality to a new peak.
He's wired hot on this one, folks. Reaching for profound effects he hadn't tried before, he was thoroughly inspired by the death of his idol, the absurdly brilliant Sam Cooke, the previous December. He does three Cooke songs here, three originals, and a Mick Jagger/Keith Richard number you might have heard.
Mick and Keith originally wrote "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in tribute to and in loving imitation of Otis' style. On Otis' version, he gives the young Englishmen a quick education in the fine art of expressing frustration. One they definitely picked up on and used.
Otis revamps Smokey Robinson's "My Girl" with a wicked vibrato that told casually listeners that this was Memphis. Motown is 754 miles to the northeast. He provides a fierceness to Cooke's "Cupid" with his smokehouse voice that tests him, but he wrestles magnificently.
All of this is possible because Otis was in mourning for his idol and purposefully besieging the microphone with his signature voice. Two other serious factors are the presence of Booker T. and the MGs as his backing band, and the mighty Memphis Horns. Booker and company were the house band at the Stax Recording Studios. They're the guys on monster hit after monster hit by the likes of Sam and Dave, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Bill Withers, and Albert King. Not to mention their own brilliant records. The Memphis Horns provide that brass so crucial to the Stax and Volt labels. Everyone is exceptional form and following Otis as he takes them through the paces with a daredevil's urgency.
Otis died in a plane crash in December of '67, having just completed the elegiac "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay." While that record became his biggest hit, this is when Otis became Otis.
He redefines his genre right here. At times he pleads, he insists, he flatly declares. All with a previously unheard urgency that took soul as a sense of musicality to a new peak.
He's wired hot on this one, folks. Reaching for profound effects he hadn't tried before, he was thoroughly inspired by the death of his idol, the absurdly brilliant Sam Cooke, the previous December. He does three Cooke songs here, three originals, and a Mick Jagger/Keith Richard number you might have heard.
Mick and Keith originally wrote "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in tribute to and in loving imitation of Otis' style. On Otis' version, he gives the young Englishmen a quick education in the fine art of expressing frustration. One they definitely picked up on and used.
Otis revamps Smokey Robinson's "My Girl" with a wicked vibrato that told casually listeners that this was Memphis. Motown is 754 miles to the northeast. He provides a fierceness to Cooke's "Cupid" with his smokehouse voice that tests him, but he wrestles magnificently.
All of this is possible because Otis was in mourning for his idol and purposefully besieging the microphone with his signature voice. Two other serious factors are the presence of Booker T. and the MGs as his backing band, and the mighty Memphis Horns. Booker and company were the house band at the Stax Recording Studios. They're the guys on monster hit after monster hit by the likes of Sam and Dave, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Bill Withers, and Albert King. Not to mention their own brilliant records. The Memphis Horns provide that brass so crucial to the Stax and Volt labels. Everyone is exceptional form and following Otis as he takes them through the paces with a daredevil's urgency.
Otis died in a plane crash in December of '67, having just completed the elegiac "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay." While that record became his biggest hit, this is when Otis became Otis.
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