Sam Cooke is often forgotten during any discussion of the great R & B masters. Whether this is due to his late ‘50s break from the gospel tradition that nurtured him, and the resulting string of chart-topping pop hits that was to follow his entry into the secular music world, or due to the fact that Cooke worked outside of the soul factories of the era, R & B labels like Stax, Hi-Lo, and Atlantic that have their own passionate defenders; who can say. Either way, Cooke”s presence during the late 1950s and early ‘60s was immense, his recorded output magnificent, well deserving of another look.
The recently-released The Rhythm and the Blues is that long-awaited second look at Cooke’s vocal abilities. As pointed out in Cliff White’s extensive and appreciated liner notes, Cooke was a prolific singles songwriter, creating some of the most enduring moments that pop music has to offer. On album, however, which the conventional wisdom of the time declared must be aimed towards an adult audience, Cooke often forsook his own songwriting skills in favor of jazz and blues classics. It is from this background that The Rhythm and the Blues has been created.
The Rhythm and the Blues is primarily drawn from three early sixties Cooke albums: My Kind of Blues, the classic Mr. Soul, and Night Beat. Many of the cuts culled from these three discs showcase the kind of big band arrangement given R & B material in that day and time, with lush strings and sensual horns backing Cooke’s already formidable vocals. There’s little of anything really new and surprising to be found here for the long-time Cooke fan, although The Rhythm and the Blues stands well on its own as an introduction to the singer’s non-pop charting material.
Cooke’s wonderful vocal interpretation of classic gems like “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” or “Cry Me A River” – his voice swollen with passion, silky with soul – easily stand with the masters of the genre, serving to firmly place Sam Cooke’s name alongside the great performers of R & B, where it belongs. (Sony Legacy Recordings, released 1996)
Review originally published by R.A.D! Review and Discussion of Rock ‘n’ Roll zine
The truncated solo career of
Shuggie Otis
is one of those great mysteries of modern music. An enormously gifted guitarist
and multi-instrumentalist born into a musical family (dad was R&B legend
Johnny Otis – a singer, bandleader, and record producer who discovered Etta
James), young Shuggie was playing professionally, in his father’s band by the
age of twelve. He grew up amidst brilliant blues, jazz, and R&B musicians
that helped inform and shape his talents, but Shuggie also found influences in
1960s-era artists like Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and Arthur Lee of Love.
Otis
had recorded several albums with his father as well as working on Al Kooper’s
second Super Session LP (later re-named Introducing Shuggie Otis)
before recording his solo debut, Here Comes Shuggie Otis in 1970, when he
was just 16 years old. The phenomenal Freedom Flight album would follow a
year later, yielding the classic song “Strawberry Letter 23,” a huge chart hit
for the Brothers Johnson in 1977. Inspiration Information, which Otis
began recording in 1971 and which was released in 1974, is widely considered to
be the artist’s masterpiece. An understated collection of psychedelic soul and
funk with the barest of blues influences, the album has grown in stature since
its release, and artists as diverse as David Byrne of Talking Heads, Lenny
Kravitz, Prince, and British electronic pop pioneers Stereolab have sung its
praises.
Shuggie Otis’s Inspiration Information
Although a commercial disappointment upon its release in 1974,
Inspiration Information has only grown in influence and importance
since. The album opens with the title track, a low-key, soulful affair that
boasts of a deep funky groove and syncopated vocals, with a little blues vibe
creeping in at the edges. The lush instrumentation is balanced by ethereal
backing harmonies, making for an odd combination of (then) contemporary
soul-funk but harking back to the R&B jams of the 1950s and early ‘60s.
The effervescent “Sparkle City” brings the fatback in a big way, Otis’s funky
chicken-pickin’ accompanied by a big bass line and a slippery rhythm, the song
boldly mixing jazz, blues, soul, and funk into a single invigorating listening
experience. Otis’s vocals are understated and don’t drop into the mix until
around two minutes in, but the meter of the lyrics matches the song’s overall
rhythmic blueprint to create one fun mess!
Using a bossa nova
styled rhythmic backdrop, “Aht Uh Mi Hed” is an odd piece, the tick-tock
percussion running throughout the song delivered a stark counterpoint by lush
strings and swells of exotic instrumentation, Otis adding minute amounts of
finely-crafted, filigree guitar layered beneath the unusual vocals and violin
flares. The short-but-sweet instrumental “Rainy Day” perfectly showcases
Otis’s immense six-string skills, his jazz-infused licks bouncing off of
mournful strings, while the sci-fi instrumental “XL-30” is electronic
space-rock at its best, strange musical tangents jumping out unexpectedly from
a droning keyboard hum.
This 2013 reissue of
Inspiration Information includes four previously-unreleased bonus
tracks tacked onto the original nine, two of which – the soulful, bluesy
“Magic” and “Castle Top Jam” – were originally recorded in 1971 for the album
but ultimately rejected, although both are quite good enough to have made the
cut. “Things We Like To Do,” laid on tape in ‘77, is an unlikely marriage of
old school R&B and 1970s-era soul, with muted vocals embroidered through a
lush soundscape of rhythmic percussion, sumptuous strings, and “come hither”
lyrics.
Wings of Love
Inspiration Information circa 2013 also includes a second disc of tunes
titled Wings of Love, a baker’s dozen of previously unreleased live and
studio tracks pulled from the archive, cleaned up, and remastered by Otis
personally. Offering material dating from as early as 1975 and as current as
2000, a lot of the songs on Wings of Love sound as good as, if not
better, than those on Inspiration Information. Any combination of these
13 songs would have made a killer album in their own right, and the quality of
performances from the late 1980s a the lone 1990 track show that Otis was still
making great music even if few got the chance to hear it.
As Otis
himself explains in the album’s liner notes, it’s not so much that he gave up on
the music business when he all but disappeared from the spotlight after the 1974
release of Inspiration Information, it’s really more of a case of the
business giving up on him. A lot of Wings of Love delves into the same
soul-blues-funk turf as Information Inspiration, but material like the
bouncy “Special” (1980) is every bit as satisfying as anything that Prince was
dominating the R&B airwaves with at the time. “Give Me Something Good”
should have owned radio in 1977, the song a dynamic mix of Hendrixian guitars
and icy, Isley Brothers-styled funk, with strong vocals and a little R&B
flavor added to the brew for good measure while “Tryin’ To Get Close To You”
predates the aforementioned Prince’s best soul-funk efforts by a
decade.
Wings of Love’s title track
is an ambitious eleven-minute jam recorded in 1990 that blows anything Otis had
done previous right out of the water. With gorgeous Spanish guitar leading into
classically-styled synthesizer riffs, the song explores decades of musical
themes, and the careful listener can hear elements of jazzy, 1940s-era torch
songs (think Billie Holiday); 1970s-era prog-rock (with a pop edge, like Todd
Rundgren); adventurous 1950s-styled rhythm and blues; 1970s influenced flights
of fanciful guitar; and much, much more. It’s a stunning musical tour de force.
The shorter-by-half “If You’d Be Mine” is, perhaps, its creative equal, the 1987
recording perfectly fusing rock, soul, and pop music together seamlessly in the
creation of a truly electrifying performance.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
To be honest, there’s not much in the way of blues music to be heard on
Inspiration Information, Otis’s R&B roots hidden beneath mountains
of psychedelic-soul and raunchy funk. “Fireball of Love” from the
Wings disc probably veers the closest to a blues sound, the song’s
raucous vocals and fretwork reminiscent of Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s funky
1970s era recordings. The acoustic “Black Belt Sheriff,” from 2000, is the
most recent track and it displays a sort of Delta-styled country-blues vibe
with some mighty tasty slide-guitar work.
Truth is, Shuggie Otis
was a visionary musician of no little genius, his brilliance and talent
unrecognized until a raft of acolytes picked up on Inspiration Information in
the 1990s and spread the word to fellow travelers. Listening to the better
than two-dozen tracks on this reissue, one can easily hear the pop, rock,
soul, jazz, funk, and blues influences that Otis used to create a blueprint
for some of the biggest, brashest, and most commercially-successful music of
the 1980s and ‘90s. This is ambitious, sometimes complex stuff, to be sure,
but it’s never difficult to listen to, and quite entertaining for those
looking for depth, honesty, and artistry in their preferred music. (Legacy
Recordings, released April 16, 2013)
