December 16, 2005

Top 25–Otis Redding

First, lemme start by saying that I hope Bush and the Boys like Otis as much as I do.

Moving on, I went with Otis Redding this week because I’ve been on a serious Otis kick lately. A member of that dreaded 27 club, Otis was rivaled in the sixties by only Sam Cooke as far as soul singers went. The interesting thing about Otis is that his best album, Otis Blue, is a collection of Cooke covers, a few of which are better than Sam’s versions.

Those work because Otis was the anti-Sam, really. Where Sam was smooth, silky and totally composed, Otis extracted every ounce of passion in his soul to put out his tracks. There’s no telling if he had any idea what to do with a pitch pipe, but he could sing his ass off. Gives the Otis Blue tracks a unique quality rarely found on covers. Not quite how Isaac Hayes could totally redefine a song, but of the same ilk.

So here we go. You know the drill–tell me where I messed up.
Continue reading Top 25–Otis Redding…