As the vicious Corona Virus strikes the world and all our lives, this is the right time to revisit and hear again all these great box sets, lounging most of the time in the racks. I’m starting with the three volumes of all Stax Volt soul singles from 1959 up to 1975, all in all 28 CDs, brilliantly remastered, a fantastic lively sound, released between 1991 and 1993. Listening to the complete Soulsville U.S.A.
Otis Redding’s classic soul album Otis Blue is the best way to experience the magic and power of soul music.
When somebody asks you „What is soul?“ – this super fantastic album from the late King of Soul Otis Redding is an equally appropriate answer to that question than Al Green’s super fab Greatest Hits LP. The liner notes on the back cover also try to explain what soul really is – and how it feels like. But the best way to experience the magic and power of soul music is to listen to Otis Blue.
Otis Redding’s third studio album was released September 15, 1965 on Volt Records, a subsidiary of the now legendary Memphis soul label Stax Records. It was recorded within two days in July 1965 at the Stax Recording Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, and produced by Isaac Hayes and David Porter, engineered by Tom Dowd and supervised by Stax boss Jim Stewart. Otis Redding was backed by a bunch of brilliant musicians, by Booker T. & The MGs (Booker T. Jones, keyboards; Steve Cropper, guitar; Donald “Duck” Dunn, bass; Al Jackson Jr.), then one of the best and hottest bands in the whole wide world, and the dynamic wind section The Memphis Horns (Wayne Jackson, trumpet; Andrew Love, tenor sax; Floyd Newman, baritone sax).
Otis Blue contains three strong songs written by Otis Redding himself, all placed on Side A: the bluesy ballad Ole Man Trouble; his stirring black pride hymn Respect, that Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, would take over two years later and make it her own; and the heart-wrenching, lovelorn ballad I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, one of Redding’s signature songs.
The majority of the eleven tracks is made up of cover versions of songs first made famous by other great singers. There are Sam Cooke’s civil-rights movement hymn Change Gonna Come and Cooke’s explosive dancefloor banger Shake; Solomon Burke’s Down in the Valley; a touching, more gritty rendition of The Temptations‘ wonderful Motown ballad My Girl; Wonderful World, another Sam Cooke original, but in a more rocking, staxified way; B.B. King’s blues rocker Rock Me Baby as a fiery rocking, well … blues; a dynamic version of the Rolling Stones hit of the moment, Satisfaction; and finally, You Don’t Miss Your Water, another highly emotive soul ballad, originally written and tenderly sang by Stax recording artist and songwriter William Bell.
But all these cover versions – call them better reinterpretations – sound like Otis Redding originals. Because, backed by the best soul band ever (on par with Motown’s The Funk Brothers featuring genius bassist James Jamerson) the charismatic singer made them all his own. Otis Redding got lots of soul and he knew how to use it – to create a style of his own. In the 1960s he was the King of Soul to Aretha Franklin’s Queen of Soul. Respect!
Otis Redding Otis Blue. Otis Redding Sings Soul, Volt/Atlantic Records, 1965
Klaus Winningers Beat 