Otis Redding The Soul Album Cover

[Bradley Zweig]

TheSoul Album is the fourth studio album by American soul singer-songwriter Otis Redding, released in 1966.[1] It features Redding performing songs that he co-wrote, as well as covers of songs by such musicians as Sam Cooke, Eddie Floyd, Roy Head, and Smokey Robinson. Guitarist Steve Cropper contributed guitar on the album, and is also credited as the co-author of three tracks.[3]

The Soul Album entered the Billboard LP charts upon its release in April 1966,[1] and made the Hot 100 chart in June.[4] The album peaked at number 54 in July, and remained among the 100 best-selling albums until autumn.[1] It spent 28 weeks on the US R&B albums chart, peaking at number 3, and reached number 58 on the US pop and rock charts.[5][additional citation(s) needed]

The cover of The Soul Album was designed by Loring Eutemey of Atlantic Records.[1] According to author Jonathan Gould, the album's cover photo "drew a stark contrast with the racial obfuscation of Otis Blue [Redding's previous album] by presenting a full-color portrait of a strikingly beautiful African American model wearing a head scarf and a coy half-smile, her warm brown eyes staring directly into the lens."[1]

Bruce Eder of AllMusic gave the album a positive review, writing that it "shows [Redding] moving from strength to strength in a string of high-energy, sweaty soul performances, interspersing his own songs with work by Sam Cooke ("Chain Gang"), Roy Head ("Treat Her Right"), Eddie Floyd ("Everybody Makes a Mistake"), and Smokey Robinson ("It's Growing") and recasting them in his own style, so that they're not 'covers' so much as reinterpretations [...]".[3] Eder also refers to the track "Cigarettes and Coffee" as "the jewel of this undervalued collection".[3]

Otis Blue is composed mainly of cover versions of contemporary R&B hits, exploring themes from the blues and love ballads, among others. Three of the LP's eleven songs were written by Redding, and three others were written by fellow soul singer Sam Cooke, who had died several months before the album was made. Except for one track, Otis Blue was recorded in the span of 24 hours from July 9 to 10, 1965, at the Stax recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee. As with Redding's previous records, he was backed by the Stax house band Booker T. & the M.G.'s, a horn section featuring members of the Mar-Keys and the Memphis Horns, and pianist Isaac Hayes, providing a rhythmic Southern soul accompaniment for the singer's exuberant and forceful performances.

Otis Blue was a crossover success for Redding and proved one of his best-selling LPs with more than 250,000 copies sold. It was his first to top the US R&B LPs chart and also reached number 6 on the UK Albums Chart, while three of its singles became top 40 hits: the Redding original "I've Been Loving You Too Long", the Rolling Stones cover "Satisfaction", and "Respect" (later repopularized by Aretha Franklin). Released at the beginning of the album era, Otis Blue is considered by critics to be Redding's first fully realized LP[1] and the definitive soul album of its period. It ranks frequently and highly on professional listings of the best albums, including Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" (at number 78) and Time magazine's "All-Time 100 Greatest Albums" (at number 92). A two-disc collector's edition of Otis Blue was released in 2008 by Rhino Records.

Stax Records president Jim Stewart had released Otis Redding's "These Arms of Mine" as a single after hearing him sing it at an audition in 1962. When it charted, he signed Redding to the label.[2] The moderately successful LP albums Pain in My Heart (1964) and The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads (1965) followed, with both performing well on the newly established R&B LPs chart (published by Billboard), although not on its pop counterpart.[3] Preparations for a third album followed soon after, which would also serve as Redding's second to be released through Volt Records, a subsidiary label of Stax.[4][5]

Redding recorded the album with the Stax house band Booker T. & the M.G.'s (keyboardist/bandleader Booker T. Jones, guitarist Steve Cropper, bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn, drummer Al Jackson Jr.), Isaac Hayes on piano, and a horn section consisting of members of the Mar-Keys and the Memphis Horns. The album was largely recorded in a 24-hour session between 10 am on July 9 (a Saturday) and 2 pm on July 10, 1965, with a break from 8 pm Saturday to 2 am on Sunday to allow the house band to play local gigs.[6][7][8][9]

As with Redding's previous album, engineer Tom Dowd came to the studio to assist the recording, considering Redding to be a "genius" alongside the likes of Bobby Darin and Ray Charles.[10] "Ole Man Trouble", placed as the opening track on the LP, was finished in sessions earlier than the other songs and later released as a B-side of "Respect".[3] The album's fifth track, "I've Been Loving You Too Long", had been previously recorded in April in mono with Booker T. Jones on piano. It was released as a single that month and became a number-two hit on Billboard's R&B chart; it was re-recorded in stereo for the album.[3][11]

The majority of the tracks on Otis Blue are cover versions, including three songs originally by fellow soul singer Sam Cooke, who had been shot dead in December 1964.[12] According to Jason Mendelsohn of PopMatters, the album is a "set of soul standards, blues and rock covers, Motown hits, and original material".[13] The album opens with the "mournfully harried" "Ole Man Trouble", described by fellow PopMatters writer Claudrena N. Harold as one of Redding's most phantasmagoric tunes.[14][15] The lyrics deal with a man, who is "unable to escape the brutal realities of the blues",[14] and has been compared with Paul Robeson's "Ole Man River".[16]

"Respect" was possibly inspired by a quote of drummer Al Jackson Jr., who allegedly said to Redding after a tour, "What are you griping about? You're on the road all the time. All you can look for is a little respect when you come home."[17] An alternative story is told by Redding's friend and road manager, Earl "Speedo" Sims, who states that the song "came from a group I was singing with", and that even though Redding rewrote it, "a lot of the lyric was still there"; Sims adds: "He told me I would get a credit, but I never did".[18] Sims also states that he sang the backing vocals in the chorus.[3] Essentially a ballad, "Respect" is an uptempo and energetic song, which took "a day to write, 20 minutes to arrange, and one take to record", according to Redding.[16] Aretha Franklin covered this song in 1967 and with it topped the Billboard R&B and Pop charts.[19] Redding shouted to a woman for more respect, while Franklin ironically countered the song and transformed it into a "feminist hymn".[16]

The next song is an energetic version of Sam Cooke's ballad, "Change Gonna Come"; a protest against racial segregation and disrespect for black people.[20] "Down in the Valley" is a funky cover of Solomon Burke's original, with whom Redding toured before the recording.[14][21] Nate Patrin of Pitchfork felt that the song "ratchets up both the gospel beatitude and the secular lust".[15] The love song "I've Been Loving You Too Long" was co-written by Redding and the Impressions' lead singer Jerry Butler in a hotel near the Atlanta airport.[3] Redding's rendition of Cooke's "Shake" is again funkier. The song is about the club dancing in the so-called discothques, which debuted in the early 1960s.[22] The song was described as "a hard-swinging, full-throated 2:40 of precision ferocity with a force that would flat-out explode during his live sets."[15]

The last five songs are all covers by popular artists: the Temptations' "My Girl", written by Smokey Robinson and Ronald White; Cooke's "Wonderful World"; B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby"; the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction", on which Redding sings "fashion" instead of "faction";[3] and William Bell's "You Don't Miss Your Water", which was characterized as "sorrowful country blues",[14] and has "one of the most devastating pleading-man lead vocals in the entire Stax catalog."[15] "Satisfaction" sounded so plausible that a journalist even accused the Stones of stealing the song from Redding, and that they performed it after Redding.[23] Music writer Robert Christgau describes it as an "anarchic reading" of the Stones' original.[24]

Otis Blue was released on September 15, 1965,[25] with Volt issuing the album in the US[26] and Atlantic Records releasing it in the UK.[25] The album sold more than 250,000 copies, according to music journalist Tony Fletcher, who notes its use of a photo of a White woman on the cover in comparison to the self-representative cover of Redding contemporary Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour" (1965), which, conversely, "languished in the R&B racks".[27] The woman in the image, a stock photo, has never been definitively identified, but is believed to be German model Dagmar Dreger.[28][29] Although Otis Blue only reached number 75 on the Pop LPs chart in 1966,[30] three of its singles charted on the Billboard Hot 100: "I've Been Loving You Too Long" charted for 11 weeks and peaked at number 21, "Respect" spent 11 weeks and reached number 35, and "Shake" spent six weeks and reached number 47.[31] Both the stereo and mono versions of Otis Blue charted in the United Kingdom; the former spent 21 weeks and reached number six in 1966, and the latter spent 54 weeks and reached number seven in 1967.[32] Two different pressings of the song "My Girl" also charted in the UK; a 7-inch single peaked at number 11 and charted for 16 weeks in 1965, and a reissued single in 1968 reached number 36 and charted for nine weeks.[32] "Satisfaction" peaked at number 33 and "Shake" peaked at number 28 in the UK.[32]

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