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Otis Redding "The Soul Album" (1966)
Just One More Day/It's Growing/Cigarettes and Coffee/Chain
Gang/Nobody Knows You (When You're Down and Out)//Good To Me/Scratch My
Back/Treat Her Right/Everybody Makes A Mistake/Any Ole' Way/634-5789
Otis Redding should have been in a real good place
in early 1966. While not quite the global superstar he'll become after the
Monterey Pop Festival a year later, 'Otis Blue' had been a popular and
commercially successful record, propelling the singer ever closer to his goal.
A legendary set at the Whisky-A-Go-Go the same year, since thankfully released
as a record in its own right, is still talked about in hushed tones and was
performed in front of a highly prestigious audience (including Bob Dylan, who
tried in vain to get Otis to cover one of his songs). Otis was closer than ever
to backing band, Booker T and the MGs, who are now fully integrated into the
Redding masterplan with more co-writes with guitarist Steve Cropper than ever
before. For once record company Volt are really interested in what he's going
to do with the next LP, after years of treating him as merely a junior yet
larger version of 'Sam and Dave' standing on top of one another. Married life
to Zelda was as rosy before, with four years on the clock by now and almost the
full quota of four children. Life was still hard work, full of unwarranted
prejudice at many concerts and in social life and a home American audience
still less enthralled than perhaps they should have been compared to European
fans, but even this was fading away a little as Otis began to be seen as a
'star' and Martin Luther King's peace rallies take on more and more momentum
and receive wider coverage . So what does Otis Redding make of this?
Well even for a singer who played on the name 'Mr
Pitiful' and spent a lot of time in song worrying about the future, 'The Soul
Album' is a very melancholic album, which is a surprise. The record begins with
a Redding original (one of three on this album) that finds the singer nostalgic
for happier, rosier days, pleading for another day of happiness before the
inevitable darkness comes in. The rest of the album include covers of songs
about working in chain gangs, poverty
('Nobody Loves You...') and the sighing
regret of 'Everybody Makes A Mistake'. Even a late surge of happiness at the
album's finale (singalong original 'Any Ole Way' and a Steve Cropper song that
chants out a telephone number like it's the answer to life's problems) can't
disguise this album's oppressive heavy feel. Until now most of Otis' songs can
be taken at face value - the 'happy' songs sound jolly, the 'sad' songs sound
depressed . Of course you could say that for anyone but one reason that I love
Otis' records despite hating the work of
so many other soul giants is that his songs 'feel' as if there' more going on
in them somehow - a combination of cover choice, original material and
interpretation. Some of the material can sometimes be one-dimensional - but it
doesn't sound that way when interpreted by Otis. While 'The Soul Album' is far
from Otis' greatest moment that statement is more true for this album than
perhaps any of the other original records that came out before Otis' death at
the end of the following year. We've already seen that this album has its fair
share of unhappy songs, but on this record even the 'up' songs sound sad the
way they're interpreted here, with Otis growing ever more brave and
knowledgeable in his means to re-casting and re-moulding other people's songs
to fit his style. If you read the lyric sheet there isn't particularly more
going on here than in 'Otis Blue' (a comparatively 'up' record) but this record
has a weight and oppressive feel to it that isn't always there in the words.
Take opening song 'Just One More Day' which promises
the world and sounds as if the narrator has no reason to think there won't be
another just like it - but the sighing aching agonising horn part , the sudden slides towards a
bottomless pit of a minor key and one of the best 'pleading' Otis vocals
suggest otherwise. That song is matched in the Redding catalogue only by a
second version of the same trick at the opening of side two with 'Good To Me',
a song that reads as if it's the happiest song in the world about how much good
a wife has done for her husband - and yet sounds as if Otis is crying is heart
out, all cat-and-mouse tension, hard hitting horns and pulsating gospel
confessional organ. Otis then promises
that he's going to stay around twenty years 'and after that another forty', but
the way its sung it seems more like a threat than a devotion of love. I thought
for years too that 'Cigarettes and Coffee' was a naturally 'sad song' before I
properly studied the lyrics (sadly not provided on the original album) and
discovered that actually its meant to be a sweet chat-up line, as Otis meets
his soulmate on a blind date and finds it so 'natural'. Only the way Otis sings
it here you'd believe that he accidentally insulted her big nose, the food
arrived two hours late and cold, he lost his credit card so she had to pay and
the candle set alight to the tablecloth. We sometimes talk about the album
covers on this site and how they might 'hint' at some hidden inner secret: in
truth there isn't much lee-way from using yet another pretty model on the
cover. But look again when you know this record really well and see how
expression seems to have 'changed' since the first time you brought that record
home: the model gazes out at you not with the twinkling sexy eyes of the model
on 'Otis Blue' but with a far more intense and thoughtful stare to go along
with the half smile, as if trying to put something over that can't quite be
expressed in words. There's....something Otis is trying to convey on this
album, from the cat-and-mouse tension of 'Good To Me' and I'd love to know what
it is. Was he feeling guilty about fame, about being away from home, about
alleged groupies on the road? Was he feeling guilty about running out of steam
at this point in his career? (the next two records will be all downhill from
this last great release, the sudden unexpected success at Monterey and 'Dock Of
The Bay' the next year notwithstanding) Was Otis just eager to indulge his
newly minted 'Mr Pitiful' persona?
That's particularly interesting because, on the face
of it, 'The Soul Album' doesn't try to do anything the previous three albums
haven't done already and yet it's only from this point on that the self-coined
nickname seems to be around to stay (you couldn't really call the 'hits' from
the last album 'Shake' and 'Respect' self-pitying songs). Formula-wise this is
the same batch of ingredients as usual, but it's as if the cooker's been set to
a slow speed this time around and everything is coming out sad. Personally I
rather like sad and rate this album if not quite the best then certainly as
among the best in Otis' career, his last truly great album in fact. Sad can be
a winning move for a writer - especially the way that Otis sings it - and
having recently divided up my mp3s between 'uptempo songs that keep me going
while out doing something I need stamina for' and 'slow songs I can go to sleep
to' I was surprised at just how uneven my musical tastes seem to be
(interestingly my Otis Redding favourites seem to be pretty evenly matched).
However it seems a strange career move for someone whose just become one of the
surprise hits of the year with an album that's generally happy, considerably
catchy and faintly political to turn around and release an album's that's
almost completely miserable, largely slow and almost entirely ignores the outer
world for tales of love in all its many forms.
It's also a surprise that Otis twists his sound so
far. Well, not too much just yet - this is still oh so obviously an Otis album
from first note to last and only at the end of his career, with 'Sittin' On The
Dock Of The Bay', did Otis chop and change styles to any great extent, with the
usual mixture of sure and true soul classics, more obscure covers by artists
Otis admires, a handful of originals and a mixture of uptempo numbers and
blistering ballads. There's less of a 'rock' feel about this album though, with
Otis growing ever further from the Little Richard influences of his early days
(and no rock cover songs this time around). There is however much more of an
emphasis on horns, the Mar Kays performing on every song rather than just the
half of the album where they're most suitable and fascinatingly they even
perform slightly different function:
instead of parroting Otis' lead or performing in an entirely 'separate' world
(though they do that a bit too) they now 'answer back'. Several times in the
album Otis uses the trick of telling us something that seems on the surface to
be 'true' - only to have the horns blast in his face, causing Otis to change
his story, only for them to keep blaring, only for him to end up on his knees
pleading, only for them to shoot an ice-cold blast during an extended solo
before the whole dance starts again. It's the musical equivalent of the soap
opera wife, with curlers in her hair, saying 'oh ho - yes? Say that again why
don't you?' while the husband digs himself a bigger and deeper hole.
Ironically, for a record entitled 'The Soul Album'
and despite the increasing presence of the horns, this release also moves Otis
further away from the soul sound and towards a gospel one. There's always been
a little of the 'church' about Otis' records and never has he looked more like
a traditional preacher than on this record's back cover, with hand out
stretched or finger waggling in the air. However this album is definitely more keyboard-based
than guitar-based (despite Steve Cropper's greater input), with an organ Booker
T's choice for most of the record. While some songs use the same template as
before, much of the rest feature simple sweeping organ chords rather than ivory
tickling or individual note-stabs. Otis isn't singing these songs so much as
cooing, cajoling and pleading his way through them and while there are no happy
clappy gospel singers around anywhere this is a long way away from the
traditional view of soul (James Brown snarling into a microphone or Sam Cooke
tearing into a song).
One theory is that Otis always intended his music to
sound this way: what with the growing interest in 'Otis Blue' record label Volt
finally had enough 'respect' for Otis to give him the time he needed to make
this album. The band spent far longer in the studio than they had for the
previous efforts, which tended to be recorded in hurried snatches in between
tours, with Otis spending much longer on the horn sound in particular. As a
result, 'The Soul Album' is perhaps the best-sounding of all of Otis' albums,
with Al Jackson's drums particularly piercing throughout this record. The Mar
Keys horn section too sounds wonderfully full and you can really hear each and
every nuance on songs like 'Good To Me' that show them off without many other
distractions. Throughout the album there's a feeling that the adrenalin rush of
old has gone now that Otis can sink back into the ballads he always seemed to
love the best, without the rush of trying to get things done in a short space
of time (it's easier to play hard and loud where mistakes can't be heard or
don't matter quite so much when you have
a deadline looming than something slow which reveals everything to the world). Note
too the sheer range of producer credits on this album - always a sign that a
record is either taking a long time or hitting problems: as well as the Booker
Ts there are separate credits for legendary Stax producer Jim Stewart, soul
legend Isaac Hayes and Sam and Dave's regular producer/writer David Porter. To
date only Stewart and Booker T have been involved before now - so was Stax,
keen on following up a hit album, simply taking more interest? If so then it's
even more interesting still that this record should have turned out the way
that it did.
Otis certainly seems to have spent longer crafting
his songs, working closely alongside Steve Cropper. Until now Otis has tended
to write alone, but the success of the pair's 'Mr Pitiful' and a growing
closeness between the pair resulted in an unprecedented three songs by the
pair, plus 'Soulsville', written by Cropper with another regular Redding
contributor Eddie Floyd. Though Otis Redding's band was his main job, Cropper
had become increasingly in demand across the sixties, writing or co-writing Sam
and Dave's 'Soul Man' and Wilson Pickett's 'In The Midnight Hour'. Cropper's
hard work as a guitarist on previous albums had not gone un-noticed either: The
Beatles commented often in 1966 that the 'harsher sound' they were trying to
get circa 'Day Tripper' and 'Paperback Writer' was partly influences by his
heavier slashing style (there was even loose plans to record with Cropper in
Motown this same year, axed by Brian Epstein over security fears of a million
screaming Beatlemaniacs following them everywhere, or so the story goes). Otis,
who preferred working as something of a lone wolf when it came to writing, had
clearly overlooked Cropper's obvious talents and wasn't prepared to do so again
and the pair struck up a nicely profitable partnership (with Otis generally
putting words to Cropper's riffs, with the melody falling into place somewhere
between the two) which includes the singles 'Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa (Sad Song)'
and 'Dock Of The Bay' in addition to the three songs here. How odd, then, that
with his sound so in fashion there's so comparatively little of Cropper's work
on this album.
So, then, we've seen that 'The Soul Album' isn't
really soul as Otis used to sing it even though in many ways its more 'soulful'
than ever before, with deeper more emotional and generally slower songs than
normal. By album four, Otis' 'breakthrough' years are now behind him and his
household name years are yet to come - but this record is fascinating as it doesn't
exist on a straight line from A to B, with some twists to the usual formulas
and a new gospel sound added to the usual layers of Otis style. However
fascinating isn't always the same as good, and it has to be said that this in
many ways the most uneven of Otis' records. While the songs that work well are
as truly great as ever and deserve to be known every bit as much as the
hummable tunes on 'Otis Blue' (interestingly the ones that go furthest into
this new style: all three originals 'Just One More Day' 'Good To Me' and 'Any Ole Way', plus the superb
cover of 'Cigarettes and Coffee' and the mournful standard 'Nobody Knows You
When You're Down and Out') the other six songs are largely bland and
forgettable - a real shame given the sheer consistency of the last two records.
Heard one track or another this album often becomes repetitive in a way that
the previous albums never did, new sound or not. That said, though, there's
nothing truly off-putting on this album, the way that the Carla Thomas duets to
come especially will be and while at the end of it Otis is still very much in
his great momentum swing that sees him record some of the definitive soul
recordings of his era. Certainly Otis himself is on top form throughout, with
none of the Little Richard or Smokey Robinson style phrasings in his mannerisms
- he now has the confidence to take Sam Cooke on at his own game for instance,
re-working 'Chain Gang' so heavily that it barely sounds like the same song and
'Soulsville' too reveals a new, more playful side to Otis that we haven't really
heard before (and which is welcome after ten intense ballads). The fact that a
relatively newcomer to writing (this is only Otis' third year making albums
after all) can match and surpass the work of most of his contemporaries is an
extraordinary fact that shouldn't be overlooked: all three Redding-Cropper
compositions are the best here: it's just a shame that there aren't more of
them (although for all our praise for it it's worth remembering too that 'Otis
Blue' also has just three original songs). All this album needs to reach the
near-perfection of 'Otis Blue' are a couple more classic covers and an inspired
original or three - the performances, the nuances and a lot of the writing are
already first class. 'The Soul Album' isn't 'Otis Blue', its perhaps not quite
up to the similarly titled second record 'The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul
Ballads' even (a record with less highs than this one but enjoyable pretty much
all the way through), but it is another very good Otis Redding record that
broke far more ground than it was given credit for at the time without
sacrificing any of the depth or musicality of the predecessors and like them it
deserves to be much better known. The only problem is that, from here, it's a
case of downhill all the way as first 'The Dictionary Of Soul' and then 'King
and Queen' return to the 'old' template which is rapidly running out of new
approaches, a downward trend that will only be revived at the absolute eleventh
hour with the last batch of 1967 recordings released posthumously...
The album starts with my favourite song on the
album, 'Just One More Day', the first of the Otis-Cropper originals. The
opening peal of horns is one of the most memorable moments of any Otis record
and opens a deliciously sour and melancholy album as it means to go on.
Throughout the song the horns then sit waiting to pounce the minute that Otis'
near-rapping soul vocal slows down momentum for even a second, finally dragging
the song down to the depths of hell
during a sudden twist to the minor key at the end, Otis' struggling against the
current as he tries to conjure up some hope out of the darkness. Otherwise this
song is beautifully sparse, with just Steve Cropper's drifting guitar and the
very occasional drum lick from Al Jackson, each one so many miles apart you
really notice it whenever another whallop drums the song back to its senses.
Fascinatingly the lyrics doesn't 'read' like any of this: Otis has been
'missing' his girl for days and wishes he could have another day by her side.
The way it's written is nice and ambiguous she could be on holiday, or visiting
her mothers. You could easily imagine a cover version of this song minus horns
that could be jaunty, looking forward to the moment when she gets home. It's
only Otis' pained coo as he reminisces about 'the sweet thing you used to do to
me' and the horn part that suddenly make
this seem much bigger and the well of sadness much deeper, hinting that she's
either left him for good or died. Other lesser vocalists would have locked
themselves into a prison of sadness too early but Otis knows just how to play
his own lyric, pushing it just that bit further than we're expecting in the
build up verse by verse. Alongside 'Try A Little Tenderness' and of course
'Dock Of The Bay' it may well be his definitive vocal, so it's a shame that
this song never got the kudos it deserved, a fabulous start to any LP.
Smokey Robinson's 'It's Growing' was back then a
brand new song and an interesting choice to cover - thought it went top 20 in
America it was hardly the biggest hit Robinson ever had nor the most obviously
'Otis' like of Smokey's songs. For a start it's an uptempo track, unusual for
this album and especially the first side, held together by a lovely sweet riff
that's played by Booker T and Steve Cropper in tandem before being pummelled by
a 'Thwack!....Thwackwthwackthwack!' by the horns that's really ear-catching. However Otis struggles to know what to do with
this song, which is more of a novelty number than anything, the narrator
comparing his suddenly growing love to an increasingly odd list of objects such
as a 'snowball rollin' 'the size of a fish that's broken it's reel' and a 'rose
bud'. Listen out for yet another mournful reference here to how the love that's
'growing' can so easily be replaced by the growing gnawing pain 'like the
sadness in his little heart when she knows that she's gone to stay' (is
everything alright at home Otis?!) Of all the songs on the album this is the
most contemporary to what the pop and rock world was doing, with the same folk
overtones common to early 1966 and its a good sound for Otis - its just a shame
that the vocal line gives him less room for manoeuvre and is less suited to his
voice so that the vocal comes over as so much huffing and puffing.
Lefty Frizell's 'Cigarettes and Coffee' (originally
'Cigarettes and Coffee Blues') is another album highlight, the only song from
this album that's a regular on Otis' best-ofs. Otis has finally found his
soulmate, they've been talking over cigarettes and coffee until, looking at his
watch, he's shocked to find its 2:45am. here did all that time go?! Despote
being jokinglty titled a 'blues' the original keeps the song at that - it's not
fast exactly, with the same sleepy overtones as this song, but it's the
sleepiness of barely contained joy and delight, rolling off into asides because
despite the narrator's promises he's gonna go he really really doesn't want
this moment to end. Otis just sounds weary, as if he knows that this meeting
can never happen again and that even if the pair meet up again it won't be the
same. Throughout this version the horns and Booker T's saloon bar piano drag
the tempo, all but refusing to go to bed - and in contrast Al Jackson's drums
hammer away like an alarm clock, nagging the narrator away from his newfound
love. What probably drew Otis to this song in the first place is the hint -
understated in the original - that the narrator has been looking for a long
time: comparing this new girl to 'all the others' he declares 'All the good looking girls I've met don't
seem to fit in[to my life] knowing this man's particularly sad, yeah!' This is
Otis' Mr Pitiful character again but this time finding love and hope, his life
'now complete'. So why does this song still sound so blooming sad? Otis sings
as if his heart is breaking through sadness not happiness, his vocal getting muted
on the lines like 'now I've got nothing but good ol' joy' and emphasising the
lines like 'I've really got to go now'. Otis
is being a master interpreter here, teasing out nuances you probably didn't
even notice on the original.
Sam Cooke's 'Chain Gang' sounds even more different
in Otis' hands. Cooke's second ever hit, released as long ago as 1959, the
original is a sad and slow ballad about the men who 'work so hard' toiling all
day and night for the good of the community and 'moanin' their lives away' without
anybody there to love them (inspired by a chance meeting when on tour - Cooke
was so moved by one convict's story he passed over all the cigarettes in his
entourages' possession)! Otis' nagging,
teasing, singalong spirited version seems to point more towards the release
that work can offer: the 'wham wham wham' of the drums and horns makes this sound
less likely tireless work and more like a chance to be outside the prison walls
experiencing real life. With an added horn riff 'stolen' from 'Louie Louie' (a
song Otis had already recorded) this is unbelievably the breeziest, happiest song on the album till the closing pair - and
it's a song about incarceration and loneliness! Otis is clearly having fun subverting
our ideas (though less known today, the song would have been popular enough for
most soul fans to have recognised it in 1966 and got the 'joke') and is on top
form on the vocal again, alternating between the part of a gospel style
'convert' to living life properly and one of the chain gang members himself
complete with 'hoohs' and 'hahs'. Perhaps the most telling part of Otis'
interpretation comes during his improvised vocal on the fade: 'We've all got to
keep working' the workaholic Otis tells us, 'Everyday we work to become a
little bit stronger, all day and night, we've got to be working men...' One of
the first things that people mention when talking about Otis was his strong
work ethic, as if he sensed that he didn't have long on this planet and needed
to make his mark as quickly as possible. Forget James Brown: Otis was the real
hardest working soul singer in show business - this song hints at why.
The first side ends with the first song that does
what we expect it to: James Cox' 'Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out' would
have probably been the most well known song on the album on first release, a
blues standard dating back to 1923 and clearly inspired by the great
depression, covered by everyone from Bessie Smith to Eric Clapton. John Lennon
will later re-work the song to become 'Nobody Loves You When You're Down and
Out' for his 'Walls and Bridges' album of 1974. Otis' narrator used to be a
millionaire - but that was a long time ago and when he lost his fortune he lost
his family and friends with it, finding out that they weren't really interested
in him but his money. Tailor made for Otis' peals of pitifulness (the fadeout
is prime Otis, even hinting at life being better this way with nowhere to be
and no one left to please: 'Nobody wants you! Nobody needs you! Nobody ever say
a good thing about you! But nobody can tell you when to go! Gotta get back on
your feet again!' still wailing away at full strength as the song quickly fades
to nothingness). The horns again point their scrawny heads downwards throughout
the song as if dragging Otis down with them, although the slight lift upwards
at the end of each verse (usually when the narrator is remembering better
times) is a clever twist on the original. Not the best Otis cover perhaps, but
far from the worst with an arrangement that makes a much-covered oft-heard song
shimmer with a slightly different light.
'Good To Me' starts side two much like the first
with another Redding original (co-written with Julius Green this time) which is
best described as 'sleepy'. Booker T's
slow quiet organ riff screams of 'church' and Otis is in confessional mood,
subverting his better known 'I've Been Lovin' You Too Long' by declaring that
he hasn't had time to love enough. Clearly a love song for Zelda, Otis promises
to love her for 'twenty years' until all the love is used up - 'and if it takes
another forty I'm willing to try!' Otis sounds deliciously contented and loved
up and the stark arrangement and the upfront production but more emphasis on
his vocal than any other song on the album, as if for the first time on this
record he isn't playing games and means every word he sings. And yet...there's
something slightly 'off' about this song, deliberately I mean. If you listen to
this song without 'hearing' the words it comes over quite differently: its
designed to sound like a musical confessional, the horn parts slide in with
their usual sting of bitter tears and seem to arrive at all the most unexpected
moments, the song keeps sliding into unexpected minor keys that sounds like a
subtle twist of the knife and Jackson's uneasy rat-a-tat drumming doesn't sound
that contented to me. Even that lyric, that's apparently sung at face value, is
at times odd for a love song: most narrators speak about 'loving you forever';
they don't try to put years and dates on it. The narrator doesn't speak of
their love being 'perfect' either or vow to mend his ways or all those old
hoary clichés: instead he promises 'I'm never gonna dissatisfy you in way',
complete with double negative which Otis must have known was actually pointing
to 'failure' on the narrator's part. Is this song also playing with us, telling
us one thing while hinting at another with the narrator not quite the romantic
gent we think he is? Another clever and highly under-rated song.
'Scratch My Back' is arguably the weakest song on
the album. Slim Harpo's blues song isn't a natural for Otis or soul in general,
though Cropper has fun cycling through the scratchy riff and the horns at last
get to play the sort of thing most soul arrangements ask for (bambambambambambambamadooeydooey!')
Otis sounds less comfortable almost
speak-singing the song and lyrics like 'I'm itchy and I don't know where to scratch' aren't
exactly up to the best of the lyrics he's had to sing in his career. A tired
song that like 'Cigarettes and Coffee' talks about meeting a soulmate, but this
time in the most basic and un-poetic terms, this is a case of romance reduced
to the level of getting a girlfriend because she can scratch the parts of your
back you can't scratch yourself (a particular problem at Otis' great height one
imagines!) I'm also a bit concerned at Otis doing what he calls 'the chicken
scratch' - has the narrator caught chicken pox now?!
Roy Head's 'Treat Her Right' is another surprisingly
contemporary song, a #2 hit for the writer a mere year before. A rare example
of Otis covering 'white' soul ('Louie Louie' is the first 'white' song of course
but isn't really soul), its notable for sounding as Otisified as all his other
covers when re-arranged by Booker T and the MGs. A two minute screamer, this is
Otis as lothario offering us advice on how to romance the person of our dreams:
'You start real slow...make her feel good...and tell her that you love
her...like you know you should'. The song has a real swing behind it thanks to
the triumphant Mar Keys horn part, although the fact that the rest of the band
are playing what's really a head-down 12 bar blues relates to the album theme
of not quite giving us what we think we're getting. After a run of songs based
around the idea of Otis being a 'love man' on earlier albums its strange to
hear the older Otis returning to the theme of his youth, even though it's only
been a couple of albums and a little over a year since this was all a regular
part of his repertoire. This is far from the deepest or most suitable song he
ever sang on the subject either, although a strong band performance just about
rescues the piece as an overall recording and Otis particularly is right on the
money in the songs stop-starts and pauses, dismissed by a characteristic intake
of breath.
I'm not that convinced by friend Eddie Floyd's
'Everybody Makes A Mistake' either, which seems to fall into all the traps that
albums like Otis' do so well to avoid. The narrator is kicking himself for
being a 'fool' for trusting his girl and 'paying her bills' while she's been of
'like a fool, running around, doing me wrong'. The song ought to soar and has
clearly been written with Otis' keening, worrying vocal in mind and certainly
the bits of the song that Otis improvises and makes his own works well. But there
just isn't enough of a song here for Otis to get his teeth into and this time
the song is conveyed straight, with some sighing see-sawing horns and a
plodding Booker T piano part that's uncharacteristically basic (like almost
half of this album, there is no guitar). Even a final outpouring of grief where
the narrator changes his mind and calls out 'I love you baby, I love you
darling!' can't lift the song.
Redding and Cropper's own 'Any Ole' Way is much
better, a gentle 150 seconds of pure bliss with the Mar Keys horn parts getting
a triumphant peal of 'bam bam bam bam bam!' and a strangely mournful cry of happiness
that's irresistible. In truth the lyrics don't say much instead of repeating
the lyrics of 'My Girl', but they're pretty sweet too for what they are: unlike
the soulmate of 'Cigarettes and Coffee' this narrator has almost nothing in
common with his loved one. They share different backgrounds, go to different
places and see different friends. They should have nothing in common, but their
love for each other is so strong that it can withstand any differences and
there's a glorious acceptance of the fact that the pair's lives are intertwining
as they know each other better, with him willing to go anywhere out of his
comfort zone to be beside her and vice versa. A great realistic love song, as
opposed to so many clichéd romantic songs that you know won't work when the
lust wears off, this is a grown-up piece about meeting in the middle and the
compromises being worth it to be together. There's even a middle eight - rare
for this album - and we like a middle eight on this site, this one sounding
like a rough draft for 'Dock Of The Bay' as the narrator glances at his watch
getting irate at her being late - before realising it means nothing and that
their love is going to outlast the lifetime of his watch anyhow. Otis sings
with real sunshine in his voice, the horns almost dance in their delight at
being able to do the sort of things they do on other soul singers' records and
a sweet backing band delivers the song with the minimum of fuss, even if
co-writer Cropper is conspicuous by his absence again (close listening reveals
he is there, but picking at his guitar with the strings compressed rather than
playing actual 'notes'!) Not as deep as the other Otis originals on the album,
but a strong song all the same.
The album then ends on a playful note. Booker T
leads off the song with what sounds like a countdown to the song starting, but
soon turns into the song's title '1...2...6345789!' Steve Cropper and Floyd's
silly lyrics and strutting riff have Otis back in 'love man' mode, delivering
his alleged telephone number (destination: Soulsville) and in a rather risqué
way for the times promises to deliver 'lovin' at the drop of a hat, night or
day. Offering the service as if he's simply offering to be the speaking clock,
it's hard not to laugh at Otis' cheek or his goodwill. Otis copes well on a
song that to be honest isn't like any others we've had from him before - though
it has the same tongue in cheek daftness as 'Love Man' et sequence, none of
those songs actually boasted about what a good time a girl could have with him
- instead they joked about what friends called him, what girls called him, what
he wanted to be himself and rather shyly asked a girl to find out if they were
true; Otis has never actually boasted before. This might be because the song
wasn't actually written with Otis in mind but Wilson Pickett, who scored a #13
hit with the song in August 1966 (and
recorded in May, about a month after Otis' version had been released). Though
perhaps livelier than Otis' cover, it's less fun, missing his cheek and the
strut of the horn players and was perhaps a little too insubstantial to be a
hit single back in the days when there were son many great soul records out
there. You'd never point to this song as an example of what Otis can do better than
anybody or proclaim it as the highlight of the album, but it's still great fun
and sits in great contrast to most of the album that came before it.
Overall, then, 'The Soul Album' is far from perfect
and indeed is about as far away from being a pure 'soul' album as Otis ever
came. It is however another very good and pioneering Otis Redding record, the
end really of a great run that stretched back to the start of the previous year
(and three very god records in 18 months, while still touring tirelessly, is a
great achievement by anyone's standards). Though released on April Fool's Day
there's nothing foolish about this record, although several 'pranks' are played
on the listener - notably the fact that so many of these songs deliver
something quite different to what fans of earlier cover versions of the songs
would have been expecting or what the song titles on the back of the album
would have suggested. It's not always a successful idea either, with some
covers like 'Chain Gang' perhaps too far removed from the writer's original
intentions, but Otis and the Booker T Band get bonus points for at least thinking
about how to do things a bit differently and this album is far more brave than
sequels to successful records tend to be (there's little of the optimism and
even less of the politics heard on 'Otis Blue', which tends to deal with its
subject matters far more directly than here). 'The Soul Album' may not match
that record song-for-song, but it's another good album from a great singer
almost at the top of his game and is by turns both hilarious and
heart-breaking. A few songs short of a classic maybe, but what's here is
generally very good and even the worst songs aren't that bad - not yet
anyway...
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
