91热爆

by Bob Stanley

I grew up poring over books like Tom Hibbert's The Perfect Collection, lists of albums that everybody should hear and, if at all possible, own. Unless you had a savvy older brother or sister (I didn't), then it was often pretty difficult to get to hear a lot of these records, even if they were acknowledged classics. One of the albums that grabbed my attention through purple prose and its attractive cover was Otis Blue, an album from 1965 by the brightest star on the Stax label, . I did manage to find a second-hand copy of a Redding compilation with a skyscraper on the cover and a neon sign on top spelling out "OTIS!", which didn't really seem in keeping with the man, a slightly lumbering 6'2" fellow from Georgia who had the pipes but not the looks of soul rival Sam Cooke. Like many classic albums, Otis Blue was out of print in the early eighties, but the compilation I found did feature its stand-out song, and a deep soul classic, I've Been Loving You Too Long.

Otis Redding came to be the definition of a deep soul singer. Never less than intense, he gave his all to ballads like I've Been Loving You Too Long as well as uptempo brass-led stompers like Respect or Mr Pitiful. After playing the Monterey festival in 1967, he crossed over - to a greater degree than any other soul singer - to a white rock fan base, and so divided fans and critics. This was hardly Redding's fault - all he'd done was give a storming performance at a California festival, happily captured on film - but rock writers such as Dave Marsh somehow saw this as selling out to what Redding called, appreciatively, "the love crowd".

In fact, Redding was already revered by white audiences, well before Monterey. Britain has always had a strong appreciation for soul singers, and when he visited London in 1966 the Beatles sent a limousine to pick him up from the airport. Shockingly, he died in a plane crash on December 10th 1967, just three days after recording what would become a posthumous American number one, Dock Of The Bay. The Stax label, already on shaky financial ground, struggled to survive without its star name, though it managed to eke out three albums (including a UK number one, called Dock Of The Bay, in 1968) of unreleased material and a bunch of singles before folding. My own Otis favourite was the posthumously released I've Got Dreams To Remember, a wintery ballad issued as a single that reached no.43 in the States in 1968. A native of Macon, Georgia - where a statue of him now sits in the town's Gateway Park - Otis Redding remains the king of southern soul.