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Otis Redding "Complete and Unbelievable - The Otis Redding
Dictionary Of Soul!" (1966)
Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)/I'm Sick Y'all/Tennessee
Waltz/Sweet lorene/Try A Little Tenderness/Day Tripper//My Lover's Prayer/She
Put The Hurt On Me/Ton Of Joy/You're Still My Baby/Hawg For You/Love Has Mercy
"It's
what's in your heart that puts you in the groove and when you sing this song it
will make your whole body move"
Hello and welcome to the Otis 'n' Alan's Album
Archives Dictionary of Soul, the updated version of everyone's favourite soul
glossary! Yes that's right, for the complete and unbelievable price of an
internet connection, we can present you with a guide to everything we intended
to say with words but which came out in a sort of harrumphing noise or a
jumbled collection of consonants. As a bonus You, errr gotta-getta this set a
leetle leetle leetle because it gets ou we ni even though it was written in a
bit of a ni (translation for the chronically un-hip who don't own Otis' fourth
album with the helpful translations on the back sleeve: 'You're not able to do
without this, so get just enough to make one want another three copies because
we're getting, umm, 'gooder by the minute' however much of a hurry we've
written this rubbish in). For the record, though, Otis' dictionary doesn't go
far enough to cover all the grunts he uses on the record so here are a few more
interpretations for you, several of which have become quite useful for the
present day:
'Oo-woooah my!' (Û-wéeo-uh-mï) : Blimey what a record!
'Awo-u-uououou-w!' (ĄwŵŌōŏŐ): I'm a hawg for you baby, oink!
'Happahappamamymy' (Ħappamimi): Have mercy on my
soul!
'Y'all' (Yê-allllllllllllllllllllllll): Each and every one of you happening dudes and
dogs!
'Got-Got-Got-Got-Got!' (GÕT!!!): I think our Otis-bot has got stuck again!
Give it a push!
'Ah-Y'allUhuh yeah!' (ahuluhuye-æh): I do
indubitably agree with you my dear sir
'Uwwwwoaaaawwww!' (ὓwoooooaὦ): What do you mean side
one's finished already? I've only just sat down and the record player is way
over there and I've just got really comfy and how come records were so short
back then? Unbelievable!
'Eggggggggggh!' (Ɇɰɿʬʩʦ): Oh no! My internet connection's
down just as I was enjoying the erudite and slightly fabulous writing over at
Alan's Album Archives!
'Aggggggggggh!' (žſƀƐƌƇ): Oh no! Another Conservative
fake election victory!
'Uggggggggggh!' (ðﻱﻔɏɟɚɄɃɁȱȡɆ): Oh no! The Spice Girls!
There is, however, a depth of feeling across this
record that even these latest terms and conditional words can't possibly hope
to express. Amazingly, completely and unbelievably Otis' fourth record and the
follow-up to his masterpiece 'Otis Blue' (his most successful record by far to
date) is one of the saddest albums in the self-proclaimed Mr Pitiful's canon.
The last album told, nay ordered us in varying degrees to 'shake', to have
'respect' and that 'a change is gonna come'. 'Otis Blue' is many things but
it's also Redding's most upbeat album, charged with a certain inner confidence
and pizzazz. 'The Dictionary Of Soul', despite the title, can come across as a
little one-note with ten deeply melancholy blueses at different speeds
enlivened only by the story of betrayal 'Day Tripper' (turned from cute Beatles
hit into relationship Armageddon) and 'I'm A Hawg For You' (an excuse to do
some American Indian whistling). Otis has always been good at sadness, a sound
that come naturally to him as a vocalist with its chance for long drawn out notes
and big space for characterisation and emotion. Where other soul singers use
their vocals as a chance to impress or sing really fast, Otis (at least two
thirds of the time) really is using his voice to make some deeper connection,
trying desperately to find a connection in his audience so that both he and we
don't feel quite so alone or abandoned after seeing him open his soul to us. Of
all the soul vocalists who've ever lived Otis is the most 'soul' : other flash
singers (though not many) might sing better or faster or harder, but none can
make a song feel as if it's being lived and experienced as much as our own
gentle giant. Of all the original five albums (duet record 'King and Queen'
being a special case) 'Dictionary Of Soul' is perhaps the best example of this,
with Otis struck dumb by the melancholy of life as much as the rockin'
pneumonia and about as melancholy as the boogie-woogie flu. It is, alas, rather
a sad place to find our hero on the last completed solo album and a mere
calendar year before his untimely death and a seemingly odd place to find him
18 months into his career and after the twin biggest breakthroughs of his
career (the 'Otis Blue' album's sales and acclaim and a four night stand at the
Whiskey-A-Go-Go later released as a live album; even Bob Dylan raved about it
and he rarely raved about anything back then!)
However, while professionally the long hard work of
the last few years was falling into place at last, personally things were
looking a little shaky. Otis had married young - he was nineteen, his wife
Zelda was sixteen and the bigger Redding became the more in demand he was and
the more time he had to spend away from home. Throw in the usual rock/soulstar
groupie shenanigans and .suddenly all those songs of guilt and pleas for
forgiveness - which reach a peak on this album - don't sound quite so much like
acting anymore. Many performers would have shrugged and ended the marriage
then: managers liked it best when you were 'unattached' anyway back then, even
though one of the big differences between fans in the 1950s and 1960s were that
people back home loved their singers as people, realised they were never likely
to meet and just wanted them to be happy (though that didn't stop a few
marriage proposals in the post just in case). But neither Otis nor Zelma were
the quitting kind. Besides, unlike some relationships where a rock star's
girlfriend/wife/boyfriend/husband/significant other stops becoming their muse
the minute the wedding bells start to ring, you can tell that Otis was still
besotted. Covers aside (many of which were selected for their emotional
resonance anyway), all of Otis' material very nearly is about his wife
somewhere: their love, the support, the hopes for a future that sadly never
happened. Other Redding records, especially the early ones, can be quite
playful on this score despite Otis' often gloomy image: 'Come To Me' 'Your One
and Only Man'. But 'Dictionary' feels like a very different prospect, with
every index and every entry turned inward: Otis is either depressed, or guilty,
or desperate to make amends, or tired of living his life like this. He knows
that a crunch time is coming in his marriage when he'll have to choose either
his family or his music. Again, most 'stars' wouldn't have looked back - pre-fame
marriages were something to be discarded along with the slums and estates you
were brought up with. But Otis has always been a deeper writer than that. As
early as his first album he's singing about the importance of 'security' to
him, of having a home to come back to however mad his life gets up to on the
road. In retrospect the next year or so of Otis' career sound like one long
delaying tactic while Otis tries to get his head straight so he can be true to
himself and his marriage, his last year on earth all but wasted until near the
sudden explosion of creativity in the last month or so, his one and only
finished album after this one a slightly wonky duets album (as if Otis is
living out all the things in his relationship from two sides, but with a slightly
clunky jovial side) and his next solo album is never finished (though he had
about three times the material compared to normal to choose from) but points at
him choosing family at least partly over affairs. If the 'Dictionary Of Soul'
really was real and available in shops (Id' buy it, if only to find out why 'fa
fa fa fa fa fa' means a 'sad song') the entry next to this album would feature
a soggy wet heap, the most pitiful or Mr Pitiful's albums.
Which is not to say it's bad. On the contrary,
'Dictionary Of Soul' is much like second album 'Sings Soul Ballads' and fourth
record 'The Soul Album' in that it's about halfway to being a classic - a shame
about the other half. A deep thinker in one of the deepest thinking periods of
his life, 'Dictionary' has several great moments. 'Try A Little Tenderness'
wowed the crowds at Monterey six months later (the only song in the set not
taken from 'Otis Blue') for a good reason: it's Otis near his best as he tries
to offer both himself and us advice while taking a melancholy horn part and
simultaneously making it sound big and powerful and hopeful by the end. Most
Redding covers tend to stick rigidly in either sad or happy territory, but Otis
is often at his best when he's straddling the two, taking a sad song and making
it feel all better. This is perhaps the greatest example of his all too brief
catalogue. That terack is closely matched by the album single 'Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa
Fa (Sad Song)', which apart from driving me mad every time I have to write it
out and count the 'Fa's in full all over again is a clever twist on the 'Mr
Pitiful' idea, a sad song that isn't really no matter how many times Otis tells
us it is. Of the album's lesser known songs 'I'm Sick Y'all' virtually created
the whole funk genre with Otis moaning to a hard-as-rock riff that's just too
inflexible to care, 'I'm A Hawg For You' is one of Otis' best 'novelty' songs,
best heard once but at least quite funny the once you hear it, 'Love Have
Mercy' features one of the better soul-performances-of-a-rock-groove the equal
of any other 'riff' song in the riff heavy year of 1966 and the slow aching
minor key sadness of 'My Lover's Prayer' is exquisite, one of Otis' greatest
originals and perhaps the most honest of all his songs, caught between pity,
guilt, anger and a deep deep sadness that breaks the heart. No wonder the back
sleeve of this record lists the definition 'ou-ni', to 'hurt so good', it's a
phrase that sums this half of the album up well.
Of course then there's the other half which sounds
oddly distracted and weak for an artist who'd finally discovered his true
calling on record just a year before. Otis sounds drained, run down by the
pressures of coming up with his fifth album in three years and almost constant
touring and though the seven originals on the album (the most of his published
career, though his unfinished 'last' album would most likely have had more)
point to a rush of creativity, to be honest a lot of them just sound like
re-treads of where Otis had been before. 'She Put The Hurt On Me' and 'Ton Of
Joy' are a step backwards to the early years while even their own writer seems
to be uncharacteristically struggling how to sing them. The worst moment on the
record though - perhaps on all the records before Carla Thomas gets involved - is
the oft-covered 'Tennessee Waltz' which really doesn't fit soul or Otis and
sounds like one big moan, uncomfortably in the wrong key for the singer
throughout. Ah well, 'Try A Little Tenderness'
and 'My Lover's Prayer' alone more than make up for the album's lesser
moments. How much better this album would have been, though, with the better
tracks from the album sessions released on it too: the exquisite 'Remember Me'
(which would have fitted the confessional mood well), the sweet 'You Left The
Water Running' (ditto), maybe even the 'Lover's Prayer' flipside 'Don't Mess
With Cupid' (which is daft but less so than 'Ton Of Joy'). For a time this
record was even set to feature Otis' interpretation of the freshly minted Bob
Dylan song 'Just Like A Woman' which the Bobmeister had offered to Otis first
backstage at the 'Whiskey-A-Go-Go' gig. Though many have since complained that
Otis turned down the 'perfect' song, the only bit that's really Otis is the
sudden surge of power in the middle eight - everything else is the usual Dylan
wordplay and metaphor, not to mention 'fog, amphetamines and pearls', which
isn't really Otis' forte. Fun as a version would have been, chances are Redding
simply didn't understand the song.
One other reason this album doesn't quite match
'Otis Blue' especially is the lack of input from Booker T and the MGs. Now, as
per every other Otis album they're very much here as a second element and
guitarist Steve Cropper received a co-credit for
'Fa-I'm-not-writing-all-that-out-again-Fa (Sad Song)'. But compared to the
olden days this is very much an Otis-with-horns record - actually it's a great
showcase for the Mar-Keys trumpet section who sound utterly gorgeous on
'Tenderness' and 'Prayer', saying everything that cannot be said. Usually, though,
that would be the Mgs role too, but the driving 'Day Tripper' aside (not
exactly the most confessional moment here) the band have relatively little to
add to the music. There are, for instance, no organ solos (in fact Booker T
sticks mainly to simple minor key piano licks) and Cropper, astonishingly
doesn't play a guitar solo either (after Otis' vocals themselves the most
'signature' sound of any Redding album). Donald 'Duck' Dunn and Al Jackson feel
slightly wasted here, again on really getting their groove on for 'Day
Tripper'. This may have simply been a matter of circumstances: by now the MGs
are more in demand than ever, with their third and fourth albums (the slightly
disappointing 'And Now!' and the deeply odd festive record 'In The Christmas
Spirit', which features strangely soul-less soul covers of carols) out in the
shops a mere month after 'Dictionary'. Redding had been on tour with his
substitute band The Bar-Keys while the MGs had been criss-crossing the country
on their own tour - chances are, unlike the olden days, they barely got time to
send each other postcards never mind ideas for the albums. However given the
personal nature of many of the songs, could it be that Otis was just reluctant
about opening up about what was on his mind, while simultaneously being
afflicted with the need to be authentic, to write songs from the heart or not
at all. Either way, sadly the lack of MGs input is the biggest obstacle that
prevents this album from being as great as 'Otis Blue', along with two songs too
many of filler material.
Oddly, though, reviewers at the time and a few since
have always liked this album more than the fans, usually praised for its
eclectic tastes and soulful interpretative singing. Which sounds odd to me -
Otis has been playing styles as early as his first record 'Pain In My Heart'
(which is what a Little Richard album made by Sam Cooke would sound like) and
in those terms 'Dictionary' is actually a backwards step, with several 'pure'
soul ballads that sound like before with only three and a half (the half being
the second half of 'Tenderness') of the twelve songs possessing anything above
a walking pace tempo. The reviewers seem to have missed the point on the
'interpretative singing' too - Otis sounds uncharacteristically awful the few
times he's not singing from the heart ('Ton Of Joy' is a struggle to sit
through, while 'You're Still My Baby' might well be the worst Redding vocal in
the slow yearning aching ballad style he made his own, all over the shop across
the song). However what 'Dictionary' does have over other Redding albums, even
'Otis Blue', is realism and honesty with the best tracks on this album songs
where Otis clearly isn't 'interpreting' anything but singing right from his
soul. The performances on 'Tenderness' and 'My Lover's Prayer' especially rank
alongside his best, but calling them interpretative singing is like calling
'The Wall' Pink Floyd's greatest interpretative album, praising John Lennon for
getting so far into the part of a songwriter who had a tough life that mirrored
his own in great detail during his primal scream years or praising the Spice Girls video for
'Wannabe' full of kung-fu kicks aimed at tramps interpretative dance.
It's one of the great tragedies of this site not
only that Otis died so young but that he died just when he died, at the height
of his fame and after all the places had just fallen into place. The Otis of
the last two months of 1967 is so different to the Otis of this album: now
confident, calm, assured and able to make sense of a heartbreaking year with
renewed vigour at keeping both his marriage and his career alive ('Dock Of The
Bay' is the tip of the iceberg of this sea change, which is easily the oddest
metaphor I've used today - no wonder the ships are 'rolling'!) 'Dictionary',
for all its impersonal title and hilarious mock-learned cover (in real life
Otis left school at fifteen, examless, to keep his family afloat after his
father's death) is too close to the eye of the storm to be any of these things,
Redding so stricken with grief and doubt and worry that he can't think or in
some cases write or sing straight. The sheer speed of this album, almost six
months to the day after 'The Soul Album', probably didn't help much either. But
where this album wins out is the sheer intensity of 'Tenderness' and 'Prayer',
two songs every bit the equal of any other tracks in the Redding canon, matched
in self-deprecating terms by 'Fa x Six (Sad Song)', a glorious sequel to 'Mr
Pitiful' that manages to be even funnier. 'Dictionary' is an album without as
many pages worth reading as some other Otis records, but the pages that are
good are miraculous. Not complete then by any means (this may well be Otis'
most 'incomplete' and inconsistent record since his first) and by Redding terms
not all that unbelievable, but 'Dictionary' is another very strong Redding
album that leaves you saying more than a few 'my my mys' along the way.
'Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)' would not doubt have
been mentioned in our Otis reviews a lot earlier had it been easier to write
out. It is, you see, a very important track in Redding's canon that doesn't
always get the due it deserves (perhaps because no fan in casual conversation
is going to casually drop the name 'Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa' into conversation the same
way they do 'Dock Of The Bay'). Apart from 'Try A Little Tenderness' it was the
last big hit of Otis' lifetime and 'feels' like a career ending song, a tale of
frustration at how so many things have changed in the singer's life and yet
some things always stay the same. 'I keep singing these sad songs, because sad
songs is all I know' Otis sighs in his best 'Mr Pitiful' voice, even though we
know this time that patently isn't true, that songs like 'Respect' 'Shake' and
'Satisfaction' have proved that there's more to Otis than this. But those songs
are passing fancies - sadness is an intrinsic part of Otis' character and
something he's utterly unable to shake off. Otis kind of admires the 'sad song'
though - it has universal reach and appeal the way his happy go lucky and
socially aware songs don't because even the happiest person gets sad sometimes.
Otis adds that he's been singing these type of songs 'my whole life' because
that's where he feels his greatest message lies, pointedly turning to someone
in the audience (whose almost certainly Zelda) and pleading that these songs
are all messages to her. The irony of this all is that, by Redding standards,
the Steve Cropper tune this track is set to isn't that sad at all. It's not
exactly fast but it's certainly not slow, with an urgent riff and a catchy
chorus that makes Otis sound more giddy than depressed (legend has it that
Cropper based it on the theme tune for the American game show 'The $64,000
Question'!) One of the pair's last songs together, with 'Dock Of The Bay' about
the only one to come, it's one of the cleverest and proof that the pair know
each other very well by now. Always musically curious, both men would have wanted
to go somewhere new while staying 'faithful' to the Redding persona - with
'Dock Of The Bay' still over the horizon this sort of self-deprecating joke
makes perfect sense, with 'Mr Pitiful' so into his own sadness that he hasn't
even noticed when the song he's singing is no longer sad, because everything
is. In case you were wondering the 'fa fa fa fa fa fa' line was Otis simply
singing where he intended the horn part to go later on, but the band liked the
effect so much they kept that [part in and had the Mar-Keys horn parts
'answering' instead. It's a very lovely horn part, actually, which makes the
song and adds just enough sadness without approaching depression. The song gets
an added twist too from Otis' turn to the audience (or the band if you watch
Otis' first music video), singing 'your turn!' as if turning the blues - the
most personal sound in the world - into a mass communal singalong. One of Otis'
most overlooked singles.
The hard driving 'I'm Sick Y'all' is another of Otis'
groove songs, written in the same style as 'Can't Turn You Loose' and 'Hard To Handle'. The vocal
seems deliberately set low in the mix as if the actual words matter less than
the overall feeling of claustrophobia, as a heavy organ 'n' horns beat locks
Otis so far inside his head that we can't even hear him, the singer too lost in
his own thoughts and his 'terrible state' to communicate. You have to be
careful with songs like this one that feature a lot of repetition, especially
as it's closer in 'feel' to something James Brown or Sam Cooke would tackle
than Otis who usually wears his emotions on his sleeve, not hidden by
production techniques. But luckily the groove is a good one the whole band get
behind and there's just enough sense of hope in the middle with a raised
eyebrow of a major key before the minor key depression weighs the song down all
over again. The lyrics, probably set by Otis to Cropper's tune, are interesting
in their own right if you can hear them though: we've heard 'Sad' Otis many
times but rarely 'mad' Otis and Redding is now so angry/guilty he can't get his
words straight. 'Been put out y'all got nowhere to go children!' he pleads to
us in shock that the 'Security' of his second published original now seems to
be over and he's had a huge physical re-action with headaches and shakes all
from a 'pain in the heart' (a very telling reference back to Otis' first hit,
now sung from a bit more experience of heartbreak). By the end of the song a
dejected Otis has been walking the streets all night and is standing outside
his own house in a pitiful state, Redding exaggerating his condition with OTT
tales of being caught in a thunderstorm and having had nothing to eat for '12
days'. Though this event never actually happened, Otis is clearly 'in bad
shape' emotionally if not physically and perhaps ducks the vocals in the song
because this lyric cuts so very close to the 'truth', Redding's worry over
being kicked out the family house for good.
So far the record has been going toe-to-toe with the
heights of 'Otis Blue' but alas things take a tumble for the worse with
'Tennessee Waltz'. An over obvious choice of cover song, this 1946 song was
covered by everybody but comes across as terribly false in most versions - the
sort of song you write on auto-pilot to appeal to the lowest common
denominator. The 1960s was about throwing out such tin pan alley garbage, so it
seems odd to hear a performer as 'real' as Otis giving it a go. Even he's
stumped trying to maker this song swing, though, and turns in what might well
be his worst performance, full of stutters and fake dramatic pauses that give
away how little is heart is in the song. The MGs get visibly fed up of this
song before the end too, Al Jackson sticking in a thunderous drum roll that's
completely out of place, as if to release his building frustrations. Only
another lovely Mar-Keys horn part overcomes what would otherwise be the single
worst performance on an Otis album, sighing and swing their way through the
song with all the 'real' emotion even Redding himself can't inject into the
song. One of the hardest going three minutes Otis ever gave us - why was this
song released over so many better songs in the vaults? Bizarrely the original
version, the all American affair by Patti Page (which you can hear on the Pink
Floyd/Jerry Garcia dominated soundtrack for the 'Zabriskie Point' film in 1972)
is the best-selling single ever in...Japan! Go figure!
'Sweet Lorene' is about as closest as Otis the
songwriter ever got to filler too, a re-make of 'In The Midnight Hour' with
as-near-it the same groove and tune and some daft lyrics about a runaway girl
who won't do what she's told. Co-written with long standing friend Isaac Hayes,
it's one of the few examples of Otis writing 'fiction' rather than feeling and
using characters in his stories. The song concerns a man whose been abandoned
for real, rather than in the imagination like so many Otis songs, and leaves
him sadly walking through places they used to go to together 'starin' at me
now'. Though his vocal is sharper than on 'Tennessee Waltz', it's still not the
Otis we know and love - Otis is a more natural confessional singer than a
narrator and gets by through sheer force of personality rather than doing
anything that amazing. The MGs cope better with a funky beat and Booker T back
on the organ at last, but even they sound a little under-used and
under-stretched. The lyrics about how Otis is 'going to kiss you from head to
toe if you walk back through my door' don't exactly stretch him as a writer
either.
After all, you only need to hear the opening lick of
'Try A Little Tenderness' to know what a 'real' song from the heart sounds
like. The most famous Redding song that Otis didn't write, the fact this is a
cover song always comes as a shock given how note-perfect Otis' vocal is here.
First written in the 1930s, it became more popular in the 1960s thanks to a
cover by Aretha Franklin - Otis' choice of it himself might be 'revenge' for her
covering 'Respect' a few months earlier! The song is perfectly suited to Otis'
style, Redding choosing to add a typically mournful horn lick to the start that
perfectly sets up the song. He also slightly tweaks the arrangement of the song
so that it starts slow and humble and sad before slowly turning bit by bit into
another communal singalong and celebration. Booker T's opening organ licks
takes the song straight into gospel and this is about the closest Otis ever
comes to 'preaching' on one of his records, offering advice to the world and
perhaps himself about how to cope with fraying relationships; all it takes is
some 'tenderness'. There's a hint in the first verse that the growing problems
between the couple are money-related, that she's 'weary' from 'wearing the same
old dress'. But when treated as a Queen she feels like a Queen, Otis urging his
audience to 'anticipate' whatever she might be 'waiting for'. By the end the song
has lost any sense of difficulty because Otis is so sure in his technique that
it can't possibly go wrong and is open to all irrespective of race or class. Sadly
the studio original cuts off short when Otis has just begun to get into gear,
but the period live versions of this song are a revelation, Redding extending
the finale into a track full of such verve and joy and manic improvisations
that the blues of the opening seem a million light years away (it works
particularly well as the finale to Otis' Monterey Pop setlist, where the lyrics
are changed to a 'mini-skirt dress'). This original is still mighty fine,
though, given Otis the chance to show off all sides of his musical nature off
in one single song.
Following the success of the soul-drenched cover of
the Stones' 'Satisfaction' on 'Otis Blue', Redding went off looking for another
rock song to work his magic on. His first choice was The Beatles' 'A Hard Day's
Night', which was performed in concert across 1966 and a shoe-in for this
record, but in the meantime the fab four themselves had got into soul and Otis
in particular, releasing a number of Stax-inspired songs in the summer ('Got To
Get You Into My Life' was the most obvious but the signs are also there in
'Drive My Car' and 'Paperback Writer'). 'Day Tripper' was a particularly worthy
choice, though, and it's tale of the 'girl' being in command and only in it for
the short-term while her man gets besotted is right up this album's street. The
MGs have fun on a song that urges them to be big and heavy (Jackson utterly
destroys Ringo's simplistic part on the original), while Otis is having fun
improvising his way round lyrics that are, by Lennon-McCartney standards,
fairly light anyway with lots of 'y'alls' and whoops and hollers. He even adds
a verse at the end: 'Mean thing that told me girl, you're best halfway aren't
you honey, better go all the way with me honey, you better love me pretty mama,
you gotta squeeze me pretty baby...' However the guitar riff doesn't quite as
strong switched to horns as the similar part on 'Satisfaction' did and 'Day
Tripper' has less peaks and valleys along the way, running out of steam by the
halfway stage. The song isn't quite as powerful a statement then - and 'A Hard
Day's Night' may still have been the better or at least more suitable choice -
but the track is still a brave statement, taking on the rock world at their own
game and proving that there isn't actually that big a difference between the
two.
Over on side two 'My Lover's Prayer' is, finally,
Otis doing what he was born to do rather than playing around and having fun with
his reputation. A surprise flop as a single, it's one of the most brilliant
things he ever did, clearly written from the heart for Zelda as a mixture of
forgiveness, playfulness and guilt. It's easy to trace the heartbroken
balladeer of 'These Arms Of Mine' and 'Pain In My Heart' to here, with a
similar sense of inner desperation, but everything's a little more up market
than before. Booker T and co know exactly how to do this sort of thing by now
and are magnificent here, with Booker's slowly circling piano licks, going
round and round the same old ground over and over, while the Mar-Keys horn riff
is one of the most heartbreaking of any Redding song. The lilting phrase tries
to lift itself up, gets up a head of steam and then falls pathetically on a
sighing minor key line that instead gazing back at its shoes, it's spirit
crushed. Otis is utterly brilliant, as he refuses to believe 'that it's all
over' after a love affair that's 'gone round in so many circles', but you know
that despite his hope that this relationship is over. The lyrics manage to
combine so many things at once: 'My life is such a weary thing' Otis sighs as
if looking for pity, 'Deep down I know I'm not to blame' Otis snarls angrily,
'What you going to do tonight when you need my voice to tell you goodnight?'
Otis asks hopefully, looking for a chink in his loved one's armour, 'It can't
be too serious to talk it over' tries to be reasonable, while 'Yeah, I won't be
missing you' is clearly an out and out lie. Otis' narrator has thrown
everything at this relationship without an answer but still utterly refuses
that it's 'all over', reduced to relying on nothing more than faith, turning
this lyric into a 'lover's prayer' that Otis hopes will 'reach you' and the
sheer strength of power and feeling will be enough where his words have fallen
short. Together with the funeral air of the music it's a powerful combination
and Redding turns in one of the greatest performances of his career to match
it, with perhaps the ultimate 'sad song' of his career. Much overlooked and
under-rated, this was the first single released from the album - always a sign
of what Otis considered his most 'important' work - and deserved better than to
stall at #61 in the US charts (though you could argue it's not exactly singles
material - what song, even back in 1966, could possibly follow this on top 40
radio without sounding empty and forced by comparison?)
The noisy 'She Put The Hurt On Me' is a second
straight solo Redding original that tries to make him out to be the victim. However
it's lighter in every sense, another of those 'groove' songs that's more about
the riff than the development. For once, an Otis groove song is 'happy' rather
than mad or sad, with a chirpy Mar-Keys horn part on a singalong riff that
could easily have become a strong catchy single. However there's nothing else
really happening in this song which just keeps going round the houses for three
minutes. The song quickly turns into Otis proving he can tell the time with a
tongue-in-cheek risqué commentary about an illicit meeting that paints him
fully as the hapless seduced victim ('She gave me 22 minutes - I had to think
about it, she gave me 40 - I had to talk
about it, she gave me 60 - I can't do without it, she knocked me down to the
floor!') You have to wonder at the mischievousness of putting such a silly and
frivolous song about a one-night stand (well, three night stand technically) straight
after a guilty confessional like 'My Lover's Prayer' though: Otis is clearly
still in two minds about his future conduct across 1966. A shame that a better
song couldn't be found for those contradictions though: this is two choruses
stapled together without an actual song to go between them.
Otis' third straight solo song 'Ton Of Joy' slips
somewhere between the two, a heartfelt tribute to the security of family life
treated in a similar throwaway light-hearted style to 'Hurt On Me'. The biggest
development here is in the performance, with Booker T's organ work given a
spacey psychedelic feel with a few effects (the MGs will do a lot more with this style on their fourth album,
the under-rated 'Hip-Hug-Her' the following year) that hint at the heartfelt
arrangement between the lovers taking both of them to an other-worldly plane.
'The way she loves me makes me feel like a man' Otis grins over a slow blissful
groove that's as close as he ever came to feeling smug. He's got everything he
ever wanted and adds that 'she's got what all men are trying to find' - so why
does this song still feel slightly dark and troubled? The hint, largely
unspoken in the song, is that a love that's powerful enough to bring a 'ton of
joy' is powerful enough to feel mighty claustrophobic whenever it goes wrong -
Otis' talk of being 'set on fire' and 'feeling the weight' shows that he's well
out of his comfort zone here. Otis hints also that he's learned his lessons,
that she's such a powerful force of nature 'she makes me want to learn' how to
treat here right (hence perhaps the cover of 'Try A Little Tenderness', which
sounds like lesson number one). Of course, he still has the audacity to plead
with her not to betray him or 'break my heart!'
'You're Still My Baby' is a Chuck Willis cover
firmly in the usual Redding mode: he's waving 'bye bye baby' while wishing his
outgoing girl 'a lotta luck darling' and secretly hoping for a reconciliation
that never comes. You can see why this song would have appealed to Otis in the
context of the darkness and guilt of this game-playing album as he tries to
play the innocent victim ('What did I do honey? Why? Why?!?') However, there's
nothing in this song he hadn't already written better himself, with a slightly
sloppy backing track that doesn't seem quite sure where it's going. Cropper
tries hard to launch himself into a solo over the fade, but Otis crashes his lines
by going off on one of the longest extended improvs of the record (always a
sign of the 'real' Otis: 'No matter what you do, no matter how big you get, no
matter what road you take, no matter what in the world you do, you're still my
baby!') The horns too sweep in from nowhere, only to be themselves swept aside
by a rather twee Booker T organ lick that sounds like the sort of things Wurlitzers
used to play over adverts at the cinema before Al Jackson dismisses them both
with a rattle of the drums. There are too many sounds competing for our
attention here on a cluttered arrangement that's unusual for the directness of
the MGs and the result is another slightly forgettable song from this album's
second side.
'Hawg For You' is, at last, some belated fun with
Redding spoofing pre-war blues songs with a simple earnest 12 bar groove
undercut by silly lyrics about Otis being a 'hog'. Fitting in the sense that
it's another Redding song about obsession, the narrator simply refusing to
leave his girl's front door after an argument, comparing a pig 'rooting' in the
mud for truffles for his own obsession with her home, it's also by far the
funniest song in the Redding catalogue, played straight except for the American
Indian whistles and war whoops that turn the serious business of love into a childish
game of cowboys and indians. The last verse has Otis as the jetsetter, the rich
star with everything at his fingertips and able to go anywhere at a moment's
notice - but he's still as obsessed with his girl's front door as ever. This is
clearly another message for Zelda, then, but performed more playfully than on
the rest of the record. The MGs, who by now are relative specialists at this
sort of thing, come up with a creditable backing track, with Cropper's laidback
guitar hitting Booker T's urgency head on, while Jackson Jnr plays cat and
mouse throughout, letting a bit of slack into the song onto to immediately
pound away like he's hammering on the door. Inconsequential, but fun.
After largely coasting across the second half of the
album, the album finally gets back into gear for the finale 'Love Have Mercy',
a collaboration between two of Otis' close friends Isaac Hayes and David
Porter. That's Hayes himself playing the rockabilly piano while Booker T plays
the simpler organ lines, behind a lyric so close to the traditional Otis style
it seems likely the two friends wrote it with him in mind. Otis is feeling
crushed by the weight of love, asking God for 'mercy' as girls gang up to tear
his heart in two. Otis shyly tells us about all 'the kisses I stole' and
worries over having to 'reap what I sow' and overall sounds as if he's
beginning to regret his behaviour, this song's improvised fadeout tellingly
ending 'Sorry about that!' over and over as if Otis is doing penance. By the
end of the song he's no longer even a hawg but a 'duck', so unfeeling that all
these new experiences and 'broken hearts' aren't even noticed anymore, like
water off his back. However the chirpy backing keeps breaking out into new
exciting places: sunny riffs that come out of nowhere, a funky instrumental
groove, a pinging guitar riff that comes and goes, a driving horn part and a
slower more reflective section. The musical equivalent of a box full of compartments,
this song is so full of goodies that
Otis' curiosity keeps getting the better of him as he tries hard to put the brakes
on but ends up exploring them all, pleading the whole time for 'mercy' for his
predicament to stop. A clever song that could have only been written by people
who knew him well, it doesn't quite have the class of 'Lover's 'Prayer' or 'Try
A Little Tenderness', but it's a good summary of the album's themes with Otis
as both hapless victim and curious explorer, both desperate to see and
desperate not to see everything that life has to offer him. Otis struggles a
little on a track that demands him to set up various bit of the songs and then
back away - he's better when he can build from layer to layer rather than
passing between them as here - but it's another strong meeting between singer,
band and writers, with everyone on the same page.
Overall, then, 'Dictionary Of Soul' is a funny old
album. All the filler - two tracks from the first side, a whopping four from
the second side - makes it a less immediately likeable album than most of its
predecessors and the overall effect is of a performer whose reached a bit of a
dead-end, tried of what he's been in the past but not sure confident about what
he should be instead. However the record also has several clear peaks matched
only by 'Otis Blue' and the best of the material recorded in the final few
weeks of his life and released posthumously, tracks like 'Sad Song' 'Lover's
Prayer' Tenderness' and to some extent 'I'm Sick Y'all' and 'Love Have Mercy' where
Redding sounds so utterly in control and up for anything that it seems hard to
equate him with the same writer/performer. There's also an impressive
consistency of mood if not quality across this album, with the debates about
the security of married life and the fun of bachelorhood spread out across
pretty much every track on this album which makes 'Dictionary', neatly, the
Otis album that probably hangs together best, with every 'entry' part of the same 'book'. The result is a mixed
album, great in some ways and ghastly in others that may well be the most
inconsistent of Otis' career but with so many great moments you can still
overlook the lesser moments. More pocket dictionary than epic encyclopaedia in
the context of Otis' career, then, but 'ou-ni', this record hurts so good and
'ou we ni', the more you play it the more it's getting gooder by the minute.
Come to it with a little tenderness and mercy for its flaws and there's enough
here in the 'Dictionary' to keep you looking things up for a long time to come.
A Now Complete List Of
Otis Redding Articles To Read At Alan’s Album Archives:
‘Pain In My Heart’ (1964) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/otis-redding-pain-in-my-heart-1964.html
'The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/if-youre-regular-tothis-site-you-may.html
'Otis Blue' (1965) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-4otis-redding-otis-blue-1965.html
'The Soul Album' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015_04_12_archive.html
'Complete and Unbelievable - The Otis Redding Dictionary Of Soul!' (1966) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/complete-and-unbelievable-otis-redding.html
‘King and Queen’ (1967,
with Carla Thomas) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/otis-redding-and-carla-thomas-king-and.html
Surviving TV Footage 1965-1967 plus The Best Unreleased Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/11/otis-redding-surviving-tv-footage-1965.html
Surviving TV Footage 1965-1967 plus The Best Unreleased Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/11/otis-redding-surviving-tv-footage-1965.html
Non-Album Songs 1960-1967 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/otis-redding-non-album-songs-1960-1967.html
A Short Guide To Booker T
and The MGs https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-short-aaa-guide-to-music-of-booker.html
Live/Compilation/Rarities Albums 1963-2014 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/otis-redding-livecompilationrarities.html
The 1968 Xmas Single and
Seasonal Extras http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/12/christmas-special-otis-reddings-xmas.html
Otis Redding Essay: It
Takes Two – The Art Of Melancholy In Soul Music https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/otis-redding-essay-it-takes-two-art-of.html
Landmark Concerts and Key
Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/06/otis-redding-five-landmark-concerts-and.html
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