You can now buy 'Change Gonna Come - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To The Music Of Otis Redding' in e-book form by clicking here!
Otis
Redding and Carla Thomas "King and Queen" (1967)
Knock On
Wood/Let Me Be Good To You/Tramp/Tell It Like It Is/When Something Is Wrong
With My Baby/Lovey Dovey//New Year's Resolution/It Takes Two/Are You Lonely For
Me, Baby?/Bring It On Home To Me/Ooh Carla Ooh Otis
"I'm
the only son of a gun this side of the sun!"
Well, dear reader, here we are at last. This week
marks our 500th review. Yes that's right, we've had ever so nearly ten years'
worth of news, views and music, of madcap videos starring dogs in top hats, of
albums that have soared high fallen low or passed into mediocrity somewhere in
the middle and of more Spice Girls jokes than they've had reunions. As I write
this there remains just fifteen more reviews to go until we've finished the
main leg of our journey (don't worry, there are more than enough articles to
keep the site going to the middle of 2018 when the first of our spin-off books
should, touch Ronnie Wood, be ready) - although David Crosby's is due soon and
Neil Young's been quiet for three whole months now so he's surely cooking up a
new one, with probably a few others to come before too long to. Even so we're
nearer the end than the beginning and it's been a pleasure having you alongside
whether you've read every single article on here (we seem to have had a flurry
of activity from Russia recently, which suggests either one person is reading a
lot or lots of people are still trying to get to the end of the same article -
hello if either refers to you!) or whether this is your first arrival. And what
better way to celebrate 500 issues and five centuries than a telegram from The
Queen?
Ah OK, sorry, got that wrong. Looks as if Her Maj is
busy wasting taxpayer's money by doing something more useful to the world (like
watching some people on a horse march up and down or opening a factory of her
son's Duchy original biscuits or something) so we haven't actually got The
Queen. Better yet, though, we've got rock (and soul) royalty in the shape of
not just the Queen but The King as well. The King is, of course, Otis and he
wears the crown well, even if he's never sounded more a man of the people than
on this working class fears and favourites kind of an album. Carla Thomas,
daughter of 'Walkin' The Dog With A Top Hat' singer Rufus, is less well known,
though she had already released three albums before pairing up with Otis and
had already been billed 'The Queen Of Memphis Soul' by collectors of Stax
Records, while she'll release her own spin-off solo set 'The Queen Alone'
shortly after this one. The result is the only true duets album in the AAA
canon (Paul and Linda McCartney's 'Ram' and the Godley-Creme albums don't
really cut it as 'traditional' duets albums), which gives us a rare 'first' for
our 500th review as well! What was that? You've never heard of this album or
Carla Thomas even though you thought you'd bought everything Otis ever made and
currently own twelve copies of 'Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay'? Well, nor have
most people, with fans generally seeing this album - the last full new release
of Otis' lifetime - as something of a cul-de-sac and with only the album single
'Tramp' standing any chance of appearing on any compilation albums.
In truth 'King and Queen' is not a record you need
to know or one whose tracks deserve to be heard alongside the likes of 'Try A
Little Tenderness' or 'I've Been Loving You Too Long' . Far from being Rock
Royalty or two singers at the top of their game coming together, it's actually
a rather drastic attempt by Stax producer Jim Stewart to get extra mileage and
double the fanbase for two singers whose career seemed to have stalled. Strange
as it seems to think it now, Otis was having quite a quiet time after the blaze
of his career in the 1965 period, his fifth album 'The Dictionary Of Soul' suffering
from the lowest sales since his first 'Pain In My Heart'. Otis, who'd only
really been truly successful in Europe till now, hadn't really broken through
at all in his American homeland and this was a rather drastic attempt to
re-mould his career from a soul singer of passion into the kind of sweet young
gentlemen you wouldn't mind inviting into your home. Stax weren't to know - and
neither was Otis - that the contract he'd just signed to appear at the Monterey
Pop Festival just three months down the line from this album release was going
to change his fortunes forever and re-shape him back to what he should be: a
wild, tempestuous singer who gave his all. Carla, too, has seen better days
since her big career breakthrough with her dad's duet song 'Cause I Love You' (almost as creepy as Frank
and daughter Nancy crooning 'Somethin' Stupid' to each other when you stop and
think about it) back in 1961 back when she was still in high school.
On paper their combination should have worked. He's
a soul legend, creativity oozing from every pore and a workaholic who
nevertheless manages to sound entirely natural and unrehearsed, as passionate
as singers come. She is, as it happens, much the same, with a sharp-toothed
grin that actually reminds you of a higher pitched Otis at times, with the same
emotional resonance and the same hard work and talent. There are however a few
problems here. One is that the pair are not 'allowed' to sound like their
natural selves, so what we get here is a somewhat halting, cleaned-up version
of emotion with neither Carla nor Otis sounds entirely comfortable with, a
'chocolate box' version of talent that's meant to be heard raw and edgy.
Another is that the pair do have chemistry (despite what some reviewers think),
just not the chemistry for these songs. Though Otis and Carla are only a year
apart in age (Him by a year) they sound less like husband and wife and more
like older brother and younger sister, too similar and too sex-free to truly
get to the heart of this collection of songs about husband and wife, boyfriend
and girlfriend or nice girl and stalker. The moment where they sound most at
home is when they're playing at being at each other's throats on 'Tramp', where
you suspect the take ended in a big giggle after the tapes stopped rolling.
Though Otis is 'The Love Man' and Carla isn't far behind their sex appeal has
been put on hold for something more 'sweet'. A third problem is that rather
than being planned as an Otis and Carla album from the beginning (when it might
have played to their strengths) instead Jim Stewart asked the pair to sound
like Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell on their successful run of recent duet
albums. Well, Otis isn't a Marvin Gaye kind of a singer. Though there is a lot
of thought behind his vocals, Otis is more of an instinctive emotional singer
than Marvin ever was and you could easily believe that the experienced Tammi
was right there with him every step of the way. Carla sounds like what she was
- a twenty-five-year-old kid, still unsure enough of her singing career to fit
this album around her studies for an English degreeat Washington's Howard
University - while Otis goes back to his own younger days in his attempts to
match her. These two are great singers, they could even have been great singers
together, but not on this material, not sung like this, not in hurried sessions
that took place over a few days. I even have a suspicion that the two singers
are never in the same room at the same - certainly Carla sounds much 'further
away' from the Booker T and the Mgs than Otis does, with far more echo on her
voice and the pair don't score off each other so much as try to keep out of
each other's way.
Legend has it that Carla wasn't in fact the first
choice for the album and wasn't what Otis wanted at all. We don't know who he
was pushing for but I suspect it may well have been Aretha Franklin, then at
the start of the rise of her fame and who was about to score big with a cover
of Otis' song 'Respect', a recording which he had already heard and approved of,
correctly guessing that she was going to turn the song into a feminist
statement, which his never was. It seems likely that Otis wanted to do more of
the same, recording edgy material that meant something, but with his last
single the under-rated non-album 'I Love You More Than Words Can Say' peaking
at a lowly #78 in Billboard, Otis wasn't the one calling the shots. Stewart
probably put the suggestion of Carla to him with Otis comment a dry 'yeah she's
from Memphis, I'm from Georgia, I guess that means we can hang!' You sense too
that the material was probably decided on before Carla had even been decided
on. Otis, not taking this album seriously and perhaps stung by the response to
his last few original singles, was initially not going to write any songs for
the album - in the end he busked the downright weird finale 'Ooh Carla, Ooh
Otis' during a jam session with musician Al Bell. It makes for a very odd end
to his album discography in his lifetime (Booker T guitarist Steve Cropper also
gets a song on the record in favour for playing on it). Then again, equally
unusual are many of the cover songs, which aren't by usual Otis favourites
Little Richard or Sam Cooke (the 'safe' cover of 'Bring It On Home To Me'
apart) but Isaac Hayes, Lowell Fulson and Jimmy McCracklin. None of these songs
sound as if they were written with Otis in mind, never mind Carla, and Redding
never sounded more uncomfortable than when singing them - even recording
commercials for coca-cola he sounds a lot happier than here. Compared to where
Otis had been (the charge of 'Respect, the poignancy of 'You Don't Miss Your
Water', the autobiography of 'Mr Pitiful') and where he's going next (the pure
heart of 'Dock Of The Bay' and it's lesser known sister song 'I've Got Dreams
To Remember') this album feels lightweight and schmaltzy. Singers and material
don't connect and - a big no no for soul even more than it is for rock and roll
- nobody means what they sing.
So is this album a complete write-off? Not quite.
Starved of Otis product and aware that it is his last will and testament as
finished, many fans have gone back to this album retrospectively to try and
find more in it than was probably meant at the time. They find it too, in the
slow burning groove of 'Let Me Be Good To You' which features a snazzy Booker T
and the MGs horn part, in the bluesy protest of 'Tell It Like It Is', in the
up-tempo mayhem of 'Lovey Dovey' (a far better choice for a first single than
the rather irritating 'Tramp'), in the
sudden injection of confidence on the guilt-ridden 'Are You Lonely For Me
Baby?' where Otis at last gets to do what he was born to do. Whilst Otis and
Carla often sound as lost as Donald Trump at a Quaker meeting or me at a Spice
Girls concert the MGs also perform their usual magic and make the whole thing
seem bigger and better than it needs to. Though the material finds Otis a long
way from home, the Memphis Group often finds a way of providing him with a
branch to safety, an oh so typical organ lick or drum beat that manages to hark
back to past glory days and - if only for a few lines - make Otis sound great
again. Guest pianist Isaac Hayes also sounds great on this album, enabling
Booker T to sound as if he in two places at once and adding a respectful
twinkle to their grit and soul which works a lot better on this material than
the singers. Carla too has her moments, professional enough not to get in the
way when Redding starts soaring but not content with letting him get away with
all of the best album moments and more than holding her own with him. Had the
pair had a second shot at this and been able to do songs more to their fancy
theirs could yet have beaten Marvin and Tammi and all the other Stax duets
teams at work - had they even played a few gigs together first it would have
been something.
What's more I love the fact that this album is so
very different to pretty much every other duets album around at the time,
especially on Stax. Though the pair do revive 'It Takes Two' from the Marvin
and Tammi days, the rest of this album is far closer to breakup than it is to
being 'lovey dovey', with that song the only other case of the singers acting
being 'in love' rather than falling out of it. Instead Otis and Carla both
worry their lives away - will their lover get tired of them? Are things getting
harder now than when they were first married? Is there something wrong with
their baby? is the other lover secretly dreaming of them even though they won't
admit it and they've gone their separate ways? Does Otis really dress like a
tramp?!? This feels like an album
getting ready for divorce papers, not wedding bells, which might be
significant. Most biographies and documentaries say that Otis' marriage (he
married young, way before his singing career!) was a paragon of virtue that
kept him safe and sane. By and large I should think that's true and Zelda has
been the consummate musical widow, overseeing Otis' legacy with a care and love
that even Yoko Ono can't match. But was their marriage as strong in 1967 as it
had been years earlier? We don't know for certain of course - and it's
pointless predicting whether relationships would have got better or worse with
time - but there's a definite sense of guilt in some of Otis' interviews, in
public and in family, that suggest adultery was at least crossing his mind
across 1967. Zelda seems to know about it too and it can't have been easy for
her to see her husband leaving for these sessions with a female singer,
pretending to have a 'relationship' if only on vinyl. Her response to this
period is to write what should have been the first of many Otis Redding songs
but instead ends up being an eerie coda, with 'I've Got Dreams To Remember'
about a husband who used to be so close but is now so far away. Though not a
duet, had the song been written earlier the downbeat theme and sense of regret
and guilt would have slotted in perfectly on this album. That song feels like a
'goodbye' of sorts, even before a plane crash makes that a permanent farewell,
but this album feels in retrospect like a precursor. Or would Otis have seen
the error of his ways, spooked by this album's songs of divorce and remorse,
and come home? We don't know, but it makes for a more interesting album and
choice of material than this quickly made record perhaps could have been.
However some of the reviews that have been written
since Otis' death, which see this album as another masterpiece (if not quite as
much of a masterpiece as the other five) are surely a little ambitious, if not
misguided. Far from being at the top of his game, the way we know Otis will be
in the second half of the year, from Monterey right up to his final sessions
during the Autumn, Redding is coasting here by his standards, with only 'Are
You Lonely For Me Baby?' sounding as if he's spent any time studying or feeling
the songs. Many people have started talking about this as Otis' 'frothiest'
record as if that's a good thing; had this been the lengthy career it was meant
to be then we could have given Otis a few stars for doing something different,
but a frothy Otis is about as pointless as a Spice Girls concept album; they
live in very different worlds and there really is no point to the one embracing
the other. Plus I find Otis digging deep into his soul (and Carla too I have to
say) far more entertaining than hearing them doing second hand cast-offs about
casual trivial love when they both know that
real romance is far darker, messier and scary than that. This is the
sort of album the pair should have done at the start of their careers, not at
the midway point when things were looking bleak and the reception to this
record at the time was cool, bordering on indifferent. Only Otis' death and his
sadly shortened discography makes us see more than was probably ever meant to
be there. It speaks volumes that Otis, desperate to plug this record any way he
can and keep his career going, doesn't even consider performing any of these
songs at his Monterey performance just three short months later (when this was
his most recent product to plug by far) or even invite Carla to sing on-stage
once. This was a record you sense Otis was always going to forget and leave
behind as soon as possible - it's an unfortunate twist of fate that this record
ended up being the final resting place for his catalogue in the end instead, at
least until the posthumous releases kept coming (and it speaks volumes too that
they all sound more substantial than this, even when we get to the dregs of the
barrel being scraped). Still, I would rather have an inadequate Otis than none
at all and after you've bought the true 'Otis Blue' five album run before this
and the three posthumous records made up of those Autumn 1967 sessions first
then you will still need this album to complete your collection and by then
you'll be so Otisified that you'll accept anything, even a record that's at
best only a third up to standard. Otis never lived long enough to make a bad
record and while this is the weakest in so many ways it's not without worth and
even with a cardboard crown and a gold-plated tiara Otis and Carla still sound
like King and Queen enough to me.
While both Otis' and their own star was fading,
Booker T and the MGs looked around for other singers to back for their weekly
pay cheques. Eddie Floyd was another Stax Otis-clone and a natural choice and
guitarist Steve Cropper in particular struck up a close friendship with the
singer. Though 'Knock On Wood', one of their collaborations from 1966, barely
outperformed Otis' recent singles with a Billboard peak of #29 (indeed Otis'
peaked at #30 as the album's second single). Otis liked it enough to cover it though
and he sounds more comfortable with this huffing puffing blustering song than
Eddie ever did. The song was inspired by a lightning strike that happened while
the two were trying to write a song, with the starting point 'the way you love
me is frightening - it's like thunder and lightning!' Otis is all thunder on
this song, stretching out his vocal in a 'Love Man' type of way, while the
lyric is a good fit for his own songs, full of pleading and longing. Otis'
narrator is agonised that he might lose his love and bids us that he's 'not
superstitious' but this romance is so precious 'I ain't taking no chances'. As
with so many of the songs on this album, you wonder if it's aimed partly at
wife Zelda as he tries to get his marriage back on track with the help of Stax.
As for Carla, she's barely here, which seems an odd move for the opening track
of a duets album and this is indeed the most 'Otis' like of all these
recordings.
'Let Me Be Good To You' is my favourite song on the
album as it's the best use of Otis and Carla's pure personalities. Over a backing
that recalls 'Soulsville 3-5-4-1-7-8-9' Otis sighs in his usual 'Mr Pitiful'
voice about how every time he thinks he's on to a good thing his life falls
apart, emphasising how he's 'feeling down' and how desperate he is for love. For
pretty much the only time on an Otis record, though, his prayers are answered
as Carla sweetly, shyly, nudges her way into the song and promises to look
after him, telling Otis that she's offering her love on a 'silver platter'.
Though Otis doesn't immediately bite and take the bait - setting off for an
equally gloomy sounding verse despite the more upbeat lyrics about how 'love
can turn a life around' - by the repeat Carla seems to have got through, this
oh so typical Otis 'Sad Song' ending up somewhere cosy and content, two lost souls
having somehow found their way to each other. As a result it's one of Otis'
more moving songs (Carla's too) offering this poor character we've been
following for three years now a shot at redemption and peace. So many of Otis'
narrators' lives have been made worse by other people's actions that it's just
good to hear someone offering to help and this is a rare love song where both
sides pledge their love, support and allegiance to each other, both of them
scared of being hurt again but prepared to take the risk for the other anyway.
The result is perhaps Isaac Hayes' greatest composition (far more than his
other famous songs like 'Soul Man' or 'Theme From Shaft'), so it's odd to
report that musically he's the 'odd one out' here, his flowery piano tinkles a
million miles away from the weight Booker T and co are giving to this piling,
preening soul song. Even so it's the best thing on the album by a country mile.
Many fans like Jimmy McFracklin's fun 'Tramp' best,
the album's first single that restored Otis back up the charts even before his
Monterey revival with a Billboard high of #26. However I'm not sure this song
was a suitable choice for either singer. Otis always prided himself in looking
smart, seeing what he wore as an extension of himself far more so than most
soul singers (Sam and Dave were never this nattily dressed!) Carla was and is a
sweetheart, more likely to help somebody than attack them. So why did anyone
think that a song about her ripping him for his dress sense was suitable for this
album? Alas what probably started off life as an in-joke (with both sides way
out of character) has rather ended up defining both of them - the few fans
who've heard this song (or seen the music video with Otis as a country bumpkin)
have assumed that it's accurate, that Otis was a scruffy mess and that Carla
was a nasty piece of work (she's certainly good at acting here, more than
convincing as Otis' nagging girlfriend wanting him to better himself). Speaking
as a scruffy mess myself I can tell you that Otis was as smartly dressed as
they come and some of these barbs really seem to sting! Though neither singer
had a hand in writing this track, it wouldn't have been all that well known at
the time so as Otis was a 'writer' who often spoke about himself you can see
why so many people assumed he was doing the same thing here. It had, after all,
only just been released as a single by Lowell Fulson a few months earlier and
was hot off the press, but at a peak of #52 few people would have heard the
original. My guess is that Otis was trying to give a career boost to a Stax
writer he admired and didn't pay too much attention to the words. Alas, though,
for these ears at least it doesn't sound like the fun track people describe but
a row set to music and a pretty ugly row at that. 'What you call me?' barks
Otis out of character. 'You heard me!' slams back Carla with an unlikely sneer
in her voice before Otis boasts and tries to impress her with his 'six
cadillacs' parked outside instead. The only bit that rings true is when Otis
breaks off to say he don't care about what he looks like 'because loving is all
I ever knew how to do!' The backing too is like a sea-sick version of the usual
Otis template sound with the Mgs sticking to their one groove throughout the
whole song that never quite finds a resolution. Only Al Jackson Jr's quite
brilliant drumming stands out, smartly smacking and slapping the drum-kit
around even when the others drop away to let Otis and Carla bad-mouth each other,
mimicking what the pair probably feel like doing to each other about now. For
all this song's success and respect, it's an oddly unlikeable recording from
two very likeable singers.
'Tell It Like It Is' is another recent, less obscure
cover. A single by Aaron Neville released in January 1967, just two months
before this album, it would have become one of Stax's first #1s in the general
chart had The Monkees not got in the way with 'I'm A Believer' that week. It's
another song that seems an odd choice for this pair of singers, slowed down to
a crawl and without the same places to stretch out that we're used to from
Otis' ballads. The Bar-Keys horn section, indeed, sound as if they're playing
in slow emotion while even Otis can't keep this tempo exciting. It's another
row in song: with double entendre that
probably wasn't intended back in 1967 Otis tells Carla to stop treating him
like a little boy and that she'd be more likely to be comforted during long lonely
nights by 'a toy'. Otis is believable when he sings 'don't play with my
heart!', but otherwise is having a rare off-form vocal day, 'phoning in' his
lead part without really thinking too much about it. Instead it's Carla who
shines when she suddenly kicks in after three verses and the song raises its
level. 'Ooh Otis' she croons, 'life is too short to have sorrow, you may be
here today and gone tomorrow', acting as the full-blooded warmth to his icy
aloofness and she's never sounded better than here, tender and sweet and a
million miles away from her best known work on 'Tramp!' It's a poignant moment
too because of events that will happen less than a year later, but the
sentiments work another way too - with his life so short, why was Otis wasting
his time singing unsuitable slowed-down crooning songs like this?
Isaac Hayes returns with one of his best but one of
his least known Sam and Dave hits, 'When Something Is Wrong With My Baby'. In
another of the album highlights, this ready-made duet is given a whole new
dimension by sounding as if it's being sung not by two blokey friends but by a
husband and wife to each other, each stewing in their own misery and wishing
the other would talk to them. Otis knows all about heartbreak and really shines
on the vocal, pouring out his heart on lines about he knows his wife is
'feeling misery' but feeling helpless to put it right when she won't talk to
him. You sense, from reading around the subject, that this song is his relationship
with Zelda to a tee: she withdrawn and stiff-upper-lip and he emotional and
fragile, each accidentally stepping on each other's toes not because they don't
love each other (they clearly did) but because they don't know how to talk to
one another. Carla sounds slightly lost here. She, at her best, is a similarly
passionate and emotional vocalist but she's just too young and naturally upbeat
a person to truly express heartbreak just yet and sounds as if she's billing
and cooing while the lines talk of despair, that 'if he got a problem then I've
got to find a way to help him solve it!' Forget the vocals if you like though
as the MGs backing on this song is fabulous, especially the gritty rhythm
section and the Bar-Keys horns slicing through the tension with a knife. This
time around Hayes' own floral piano style is perfect too, adding the 'surface
sound' of politeness and societal niceties that lie behind the sudden swaying
passion and isolation of what is really going through the two singers' minds.
It's a terrific song performed by a terrific vocalist and a terrific band,
exactly the sort of thing Otis should have been doing more of on this album.
'Lovey Dovey' is a case of right song, wrong
singers, a shouty breezy upbeat number that sounds out of place on this album,
especially arranged the way it is with the Mgs doing their usual 'how dare
you!' stance and a riff that sounds
exactly like the one for 'Soul Man'. The oldest cover song on the album
by some margin, it was a big hit for The Clovers in 1954 and Otis may have
recorded it as a nod of the head to label owner Ahmet Ertegun, who co-wrote the
track under his pseudonym 'Nugetre' ('Ertegun' written backwards so most people
wouldn't guess, though it's not exactly the greatest smokescreen in the world).
This is the daft, silly, frivolous song most people take 'Tramp' to be, with
two people so loved up and wrapped up in their own worlds that they're talking
gibberish, or at least a form of gibberish to get more sexual innuendo past the
censors: 'You're the cutest thing I ever did see, I really love your peaches
wanna shake your tree!' One of the few places you can hear Otis and Carla
singing at the same time, it's clear though how little their voices have in
common and neither sound quite right on this track, uncharacteristically
shouting. Otis isn't used to singing with carefree joy and abandon and doesn't
seem quite sure of what to do, while even Carla sounds 'wrong' on this track,
pushed past her warm and velvet tones to something a lot more screechy. The pair
don't quite convince as doe-eyed lovers somehow, especially after so many
tracks of going at each other hammer and tongs. The third album single,
released as one of the first singles after Otis' death, it seems an odd way to
remember him by.
Over on side two Otis is back on more familiar
territory, spending these January sessions looking back over a difficult year
in his love life and pleading to get things right this year. 'New Year's
Resolution' seems to have been one of the few tracks written with this album in
mind by a whole host of writers including another Stax singer Mary Cross (who
might have been a more natural match for Otis than Carla to be honest). Otis is
right at home on a track where he pleads, begs, cajoles and promises to do
things better next time, getting out every ounce of his guilt and worry on
another song that may well have been aimed down the microphone to Zelda back
home. Nobody can sing the line 'I'm sorry' and invest it with as much meaning
as Otis and his promise that 'Ooh we're going to try harder not to hurt each
other again' is sung with a real purr of tenderness and remorse. Poor Carla,
naturally so upbeat, is on shakier ground with her verse which seems oddly out
of kilter with today's way of thinking ('Ooh I'm just a woman and they
sometimes make mistakes too!') Forget the middle verse if you must though, this
is still one of the album's more impressive moments. It is, though, sad to
think that this brand new year that Otis is looking forward to so much will be
his last - one of many spooky ironies like that littered across this album.
The huge success of Marvin Gaye and Tami Terrell's
duet 'It Takes Two' in January 1967 is clearly a major influence on this album.
However it's a sign of just how misguided this record often is that Otis and
Carla are encouraged to sing it, even though it's a track that sounds nothing
like the records either of them were making before they got together. Otis as a
Mr Pitiful lover pleading his wife not to go, we get - but madly off his head
in love? That's a first for an Otis record and he doesn't sound at all
convincing. Carla too isn't used to sounding as madly in love as she's asked to
here and the chemistry just isn't there. The MGs as well sound clueless on this
song, rattled ahead at full steam without the original's finesse, power or
sense of wonder. The result is one of the biggest disasters in the Redding
songbook that the duo should never have been allowed anywhere near; both
singers, after all, tend to sing about loneliness and isolation so hearing them
bleat that doing things together is more than double the fun of doing them
apart is just woefully mis-cast. They could not have found a less likely song
for the pair to sing together. Which is a shame because this Marvin Gaye number
deserves better and is indeed one of his best, the original being chock-full of
fun and delight and giggles, wrapped up in a sudden squelch of desire, longing
and love. The difference is those singers knew how to be silly and frivolous -
Otis , in particular, has never known how to be anything other than intense. A
big mistake.
Bert Berns is most famous as Jerry Ragavoy's
collaborator (writing 'Piece Of My heart' amongst others) though he wrote more
than a few good 'uns alone. 'Are You Lonely For Me Baby?' is one of his best
and though the song wasn't written for this album it fits it like a glove,
being the third album highlight. Otis and Carla are former lovebirds living
apart, trying to get on with their own lives and forget the other and move on -
but they oh so can't. They still care way too much and though both plead,
separately, for the other to forget them and move on they can't, wondering if
the other is awake like them and dreaming of what they used to have. Reaching
out to a third person whose a mutual friend, Otis sounds guilty as he hears him
telling her he's no good for her, sadly agreeing and trying to keep away,
though his heart is breaking. Otis is born for these sort of tracks and is
wrung through with guilt and remorse with by far his most aggressive and
assertive vocal on the album the perfect match for a rocky song that has him
carefully climb his way through some key changes onto a major chord - only to
fall the way, minor key by minor key, to the bottom. The Bar-Keys lick that
laughs at him every time he tries to pick himself up and falls over again is
delicious, a perfect arrangement that makes us root for Redding and his
determination to move on - even when he's doomed to failure, too much in love
to ever truly let his lover go. Carla too sounds mighty fine, at last getting a
chance to put her passion and emotion across, equally desperate to put things
right but being clueless where to even start. This is what an Otis Redding
duets album should be doing - instead of celebrating how things are better when
done together, it's a song about how awful and depressing they are when done
apart. Superb, with another great Booker T and the MGs backing track that's
about as close to rock and roll as the quartet ever came when backing Otis.
Sam Cooke was growing more and more out of fashion
by 1967 since his death three years before, with too many modern soul legends
to worship to be remembered by all but the faithful. Mega fan Otis, of course,
was that faithful fan and you sense that 'Bring It On Home To Me' was a
compromise with producer Jim Stewart: 'yes you can do a Sam Cooke song if you
must, but only after you've done these other songs we know will be hits and
only if you do the most obvious cover everyone else does'. The Mgs change
things around compared to most versions of this song: what's usually slow and
melancholy (and very Otis) has been sped up to sound keen and upbeat. This
works better than you might expect, especially when turned into a duet, with
Otis pleading for Carla to come home to him - and Carla agreeing not to leave
him alone for long. Programmed here near the end of the album, it might be
Otis' secret message to Zelda that they still had a way to go and he was going
to put things 'right'; having put up with so many Sam Cooke records playing at
home she'd have understood that this was a 'message' from her husband, not a
song put here by his record label. It's an upbeat way for the album to (nearly)
play out. Whilst it's probably the weakest Cooke cover out there Otis did
(Carla sounds way too uncomfortable on a song she doesn't quite understand),
Otis' delicious zestful vocal just about makes it work, full of life and joy.
The album's real closer, though, was a surprise.
From the beginning this album was only meant to contain ten tracks - the least
that Stax could get away with selling and with this album recorded in such a
hurry they would have worked out in advance how many songs they could get away
with making in that time. But then guest guitarist Al Bell started busking a
riff between takes which sounded so very Otis, like 'Love Man' in fact. Otis,
who'd spent less time and effort and creativity on this rushed album than any
of his previous five, suddenly got inspired and grabbed a pen, jotting down some
lyrics that he thought would go down well on a duets album. As it happens 'Ooh
Carla, Ooh Otis' sounds like what it is - a song that was written in about five
minutes before the tapes started rolling again. Of all of Otis' originals it's
by far the flimsiest and is more like a list of clichés, with Otis calling
Carla his 'sweet and ice cream' and Carla teasing him for the 'dimples in his
jaw'. And yet the recording makes up for this. The only song here written with
Carla in mind, this song plays to her strengths - her fizzy upbeat life-loving
personality that can't wait to go outside and play. Otis too manages to
straddle the line between this being one long in-joke and a song he's
emotionally invested in. Unlike the majority of this album you can believe that
these two are 'lovers', the chemistry finally kicking in at last on a neat
halfway house between their styles: her joy to be alive; his relief at not
being quite so alone. It's a dumb but sweet way to leave the Otis Redding
songbook during his lifetime and the one track here that would have gone down a
storm at the Monterey Pop Festival three months later.
To be honest, though, the surprise of this album is
how little here sounds like Otis' setlist at Monterey. This is the sound of a
singer on a downward spiral, bullied by his record label into recording songs
he doesn't believe in or understand to make the most amount of money out of him
in the shortest amount of time. New fans who'd never heard of Otis and who
rushed back to hear those great songs like 'Respect' and 'I've Been Loving You
Too Long' who, not knowing where to start, simply went with the most recently
released album would have been bitterly disappointed: by Otis' standards this
album has little heart, few emotion and not much, erm, soul. Carla, too, would
have sounded like an anachronism from yesteryear to the 'love crowd' who
expected their women singers to be gutsy and feisty, like Grace Slick and Janis
Joplin, not sweet and joyous. You can see why this record was only viewed as a
'marking time' album in Otis' own lifetime and why the singer himself was
determined to wrestle back control of his career and go somewhere newer (and
sadder) with the might and respect of the Monterey crowd behind him (the
December 1967 sessions that sadly never were finished before his death).
However even if 'King and Queen' is Otis' flimsiest, sloppiest LP, it's not
without its moments. 'Let Me Be Good To You' 'When Something Is Wrong With My
Baby' and 'Are You Lonely For Me Baby?' are three excellent cover songs where
the collaboration works and both singers do what they do best, perhaps the most
overlooked tracks released in Otis' lifetime that always seem to get missed off
compilation albums - even though there've been dozens of the things over the
years with very few tracks to go round them all. Even the worst of this album
has excuses - most singers told to record songs that didn't fit in a short time
while his collaborator was still busy doing her coursework for her degree wouldn't
have got anywhere close to this. Plus the alum artwork is pretty fab is had to
be said, with some pretty good likenesses of Otis and Carla turned into playing
cards, the King and Queen of Spades. This album might never be the King or
Queen of your heart, but with so few Redding albums to collect they are all
special and this most overlooked record might well be the biggest surprise, the
most oddball one of the lot. No it's not the long lost masterpiece that modern
reviewers try to claim - there are too many mistakes, pitfalls and a completely
misguided choice of material for that. But all Otis is good, just as most Carla
is good, and both singers come out of this album with their heads held high.
I'd much rather the AAA be graced by their true blue heart and soul Royalty
than the fakeness and smugness than our 'real' Royal Family, that's for sure.
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
