Album Reviews

Carla Thomas mocked Otis Redding as unsophisticated and “pure country” in their classic recorded duet “Tramp” and when Otis welcomes the “…ladies and gentlemens” to one of his Whisky A Go Go sets back in April of 1966 you get the picture.

Redding was raw and loose. He lacked James Brown’s calculated polish and musical sophistication or Sam Cooke’s silky smooth slickness. Otis and his paired down nine piece “orchestra” (bass, drums, guitar, three tenor saxes, two trumpets and a trombone that the liner notes for some reason insist are ten pieces) hit the stage with the pedal floored and kept it there all night in a deep but loose Southern country groove.

His stage patter was rudimentary but disarming and playful. At one point during one of the three full sets included here he tells the audience they are going to hear a song they’ve never heard “befo.” Someone calls out “says who?” Redding responds laughing “Says  me!”

Those were precisely the qualities that made him the perfect ambassador of soul to the white, suburban rock’n’roll boomer generation then coming of age and awakening to their cultural power.

While he hit the stage in a tux and his band wore suits and pomaded “do’s,” the performances were wonderfully frayed around the edges as everyone pushed the energy levels beyond mortal expectations. The horn section delivered its share of “clams” but it didn’t matter here. James Brown on the other hand wouldn’t have stood for it.

Otis’s guttural, machine gun “gottas” were but one weapon in his intense vocal arsenal that ran from painful, aching wails to insistent, searing declarations.

Otis communicated a hot need for love and dependency; a vulnerability and weakness not heard in white suburban culture—not to mention in the usual bland accompanying music. Here the horn section could weep or glare or stutter in aid of Redding’s point.

He was gospel and he was “soul—a newly coined term for the fresh brand of Stax-Volt “countrified r&b.” Yet by 1966 Redding was crossing over into the pop world without calculation with the achy ballad “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)” and “Respect.” When Aretha took the song and made it a national anthem for women’s lib a year later, Redding’s star had fully ascended.

“Satisfaction” was charting when Redding’s road show hit the Sunset Strip’s Whisky A Go Go for four nights of three sets per night Thursday through Sunday April 7-10, 1966. While teen rock by then had done away with the previous generation’s show biz slickness and showmanship, Redding brought a full, old fashioned review to The Whisky, complete with an announcer and up and coming female singers who each got a warm up number before Redding took the stage.

Incredible as it might seem now, these vital, adrenaline filled Whiskey A Go Go performances—the only recordings of Redding backed by his own band— were considered too raw for release back in 1966. Back then you could actually tightly control an artist’s image and Redding’s studio output was strong, polished and well-produced. His visibility was increasing and apparently it was decided that a rough patch might result from the TMI these loose sets might provide.

The decision to record the Whisky performances (the great Wally Heider was hired to record two sets Friday and Sunday and three  Saturday) was based on firming up Redding’s crossover potential with white audiences and though these recordings are as exciting and compelling as any live performances you’re likely to hear from any artist, they were withheld until after Redding’s heartbreaking death in a plane crash December 10^th 1967.

Sure, Redding mangled the lyrics to “A Hard Day’s NIght” and one version of “Satisfaction” here consists of just the frantic coda, but that only endeared Redding to the crowd and made them feel that he wasn’t condescending to them or attempting to curry favor by including “white rock” in his repertoire. Instead, these covers came across as a guy dipping in his musical finger for a taste of foreign cuisine.

Atco posthumously issued the single LP In Person at the Whisky A Go  Go in 1968, after fans had already been dazzled by the incendiary Otis Redding Live In Europe album, possibly the most exciting live album ever recorded (and reissued on vinyl by Sundazed). So the Whisky record consisting of ten songs cut and pasted together from the many recorded sets, seemed like something resurrected from a scrapheap at best or exploitation at worst.

These sets needed to be heard as whole performances and that’s what this double CD set does. It includes the introductions, the stage patter and the complete songs separated by Otis’s endearing stage patter.

The release of this set is similar to Verve’s recent decision to issue the full Ella Fitzgerald at The Crescendo tapes that had for some inexplicable reason never been issued in their entirety. Like that set, this one offers a full, clear window onto a world long gone.

And like that set, the recording here is absolutely stunning. The mixer has chosen to bring Redding way forward in the mix, while the band takes a back seat spread across the stage. One could make a case for more band and a bit less Otis, but in the end, the choice made gives you unfettered and unfiltered access to the workings of a giant talent on the way to reaching his peak.

The producer chose to include the final Saturday night set and all three Sunday sets, which means you get multiple versions of many Redding classics like “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” “Security,” “These Arms of Mine,” and “Respect,” plus five takes of “Satisfaction,” each with its own unique twist on the Jagger-Richards classic. There’s a playful version of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” thrown in before the final set’s closer “Satisfaction.”

You might not find yourself sitting through the entire two discs in one sitting, but you’ll surely come back for more after your first dose of Otis wears off.

The microphones do a poor job picking up the audience’s reaction, which sounds rather tepid, but don’t be fooled. By all accounts the kids went crazy for Otis and vice-versa. Too bad the tape wasn’t rolling for the opening act: the Rising Sons featuring Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder.