{"id":968,"date":"2010-05-19T10:55:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/05\/otis-redding-live-on-the-sunset-strip.html"},"modified":"2010-05-19T10:55:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-19T17:55:00","slug":"otis-redding-live-on-the-sunset-strip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/05\/otis-redding-live-on-the-sunset-strip.html","title":{"rendered":"Otis Redding Live on the Sunset Strip"},"content":{"rendered":"
Perhaps the most exciting development in West Coast culture this week is the release of one of the greatest R&B records I have ever heard \u2013 Otis Redding Live on the Sunset Strip<\/i>. It should be equally appealing even to people who know classics like Redding\u2019s Live in Europe<\/i> and other, shorter recordings of these April 1966 dates at the Whisky a Go Go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Peter Guralnick, in his masterly Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom<\/i>, sketches an indelible portrait of Redding\u2019s emergence from Macon, Georgia, \u201cjust another graceful southern city gone to seed,\u201d through early hits like \u201cThese Arms of Mine,\u201d and the growth of what he calls \u201can aching vulnerability seemingly at odds with the self-confidence he exuded to friends and associates.\u201d Redding died in a plane crash near the end of 1967, at his peak, right before his transcendent \u201cDock of the Bay\u201d \u2013 a song showing a new direction — was released.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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The set is made up of three full sets, including the songs \u201cSecurity,\u201d \u201cRespect,\u201d Chained and Bound,\u201d \u201cI Can\u2019t Turn You Loose,\u201d and his covers of songs like \u201cSatisfaction\u201d and even \u201cPapa\u2019s Got a Brand New Bag.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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As much as we love James Brown, Solomon Burke, Sam Cooke and others, Otis is our favorite soul singer here at The Misread City<\/i>. We spoke to Ashley Kahn, author of books about Kind of Blue<\/i> and A Love Supreme<\/i>, who penned the liner notes for this new 2-CD set.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Q: Some of this material exists in previous sets. What\u2019s new here?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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This includes stuff that wasn\u2019t available previously. Most important, it doesn\u2019t try to fix \u2018problems\u2019 \u2013 it\u2019s warts and all. It\u2019s the performance experienced by the people who were actually there, with his hand-picked road band, which he called his \u2018orchestra.\u2019 It also includes Sunday night\u2019s last set: In the jazz world, the last set is where people take chances, pull out tunes you don\u2019t expect them to, sometimes hitting, sometimes not. Normally record companies say, \u2018We\u2019re gonna bury that — put it in the archives.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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You can also hear how the energy build in a live show. And the time allotted to these recordings gives you the pauses and banter between the songs: It gives you the feel of the down-home welcome of an Otis Redding show. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Q: Otis\u2019s Live in Europe<\/i> is an acknowledge masterpiece \u2013 how is the spirit of this date different? <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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A: That, and there\u2019s also the concert recorded with Booker T and the MG\u2019s at the Monterey Pop festival. By the time of those concerts, he had crossed over from being this R&B guy to someone making pop hits, radio hits. Pop radio was changing, genres were opening up. This is earlier: It\u2019s the working-man\u2019s Otis that you get here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Q: The live recording has a special place in ’60s soul, even beyond its role in rock, jazz, and other genres.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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A: Live was when soul musicians were most themselves \u2013 its when they\u2019re working an audience and working off its energy. It\u2019s hard to recreate that in the studio.\u00a0At a live show, musicians are very motivated \u2013 it\u2019s hit it or quit it. You gotta make it happen \u2013 and that\u2019s Otis at his best.<\/div>\n
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Q: Even with the great voices of ’60s soul, there was something deep and yearning about Otis Redding that nobody could match.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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A: There\u2019s a grittiness he never lost. As he said in the great tune, \u2018Tramp,\u2019 he did with Carla Thomas, \u2018I\u2019m straight from the backwoods,\u2019 with no apologies. It\u2019s there in his voice, his in banter with the audience. Otis had a balance between the down-home and sophisticated mid-\u201860s soul.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Q: Otis died when he was only 26. What might he have gone on to do?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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A: There were so many changes taking place during his career and after. But Otis was always in the process of shifting. If you think of the territory he covered from just the early \u201860s to the mid \u201860s, when he was listening to Bob Dylan and the Beatles. And he put together, with ‘Dock of the Bay,’ a gentle folk song on acoustic guitar. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Would he have gone in the direction of Al Green, with a preacherly quality, but elegant and intimate? \u00a0Or Barry White and Isaac Hayes, that between-the-sheets soul? <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Who knows. He was certainly heading in a more introspective direction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

He was definitely following his own path.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perhaps the most exciting development in West Coast culture this week is the release of one of the greatest R&B records I have ever heard \u2013 Otis Redding Live on the Sunset Strip. It should be equally appealing even to people who know classics like Redding\u2019s Live in Europe and other, shorter recordings of these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[163,197,30,275,107],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-60s","7":"category-deep-south","8":"category-los-angeles","9":"category-otis-redding","10":"category-soul-music","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}