
(Rhino)
RECOMMENDED
You'll find no challenge in this household, uh, blog if you wander in and announce that Otis Redding is the finest male singer in the pop idiom. We might in our hearts say similar things about Sam Cooke and John Lennon but really, there's no way to challenge you on this basic point: he was a master vocalist, a brilliant composer, and a ball of energy as a performer. He was also a consummate artist who, in a painfully brief recording career, laid down a rather shocking amount of stellar material; along with the Beatles, he may be the only major rock & roll performer who isn't best introduced with a greatest hits compilation. Not one best-of I've heard gives any real hint to his versatility, or to the depth in his catalog.
Case in point is this serviceable enough Rhino collection from 1992, part of a large series collecting various important performers' A-sides of the '60s. The offerings here couldn't be better, of course; "That's How Strong My Love Is" into "Mr. Pitiful" into "I've Been Loving You Too Long" into "Respect" makes a Voyager I-worthy case for Redding's immense gifts and the reason he looms so large in any survey of midcentury music. If we're strictly grading a compilation like this on musical content, well of course this rates an easy A+. And really, chances are that if you're reading this you're somewhat familiar with Redding's catalog, but if you're not: you can do so much better than this. Start, let's say, with Otis Blue, universally regarded as a classic and still one of the most wondrous albums of the '60s or ever; then tackle a personal favorite of mine, The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul, then grab one of two oddities: the magnificent posthumous classic The Immortal Otis Redding or the searing Carla Thomas collaboration King and Queen, unsampled here aside from the lively "Tramp." Or go chronologically and gather up Pain in My Heart, Sings Soul Ballads, and The Soul Album. Trust me, once you've started you'll want them all.
But Redding is not unique in his genre or era in regard to being an album artist; Motown albums were mostly filler in the '60s, but travel outside of that circle and you'll find Wilson Pickett, for instance, churning out consistently high-quality and robust full-lengths, yet I'd still advise you to kick things off with a Pickett compilation. What's different about Redding? Mostly it's that the aforementioned grandness and versatility of this catalog doesn't pare down well to a format like this; the Beatles analogy is the easiest one -- how do you explain the Beatles in forty-five minutes? Every comp I've heard is fixated upon Redding as balladeer, and sure, he was a great one, one of the best. But ballads don't dominate the performance mastery and songwriterly expertise inherent to his body of work, certainly not in the way they define, say, Gene Vincent or even Marvin Gaye, whose world was always so passionately contained. Redding was a cut-loose-and-move-free performer; you get a taste of it in the cover of "Satisfaction" included here, wherein he comes to own the song so thoroughly that I don't recommend you hear it if you deeply love the Rolling Stones' version, because it will never sound anything but quaint again. Redding's own songs were great but his dominance over the material he covered, his ability to tower over and transform it, was above reproach, and our only real hints here are "Satisfaction," admittedly a great choice, and the relatively conservative "Try a Little Tenderness."
Again, these are all essential cuts, but vocally Redding would go on these astounding near-wordless tangents like on "Satisfaction" wherein he seems to nearly lose control of his singing, he's so wound up, and his relationship to the music becomes so blisteringly powerful and complex, and it's as if he's creating some wide-scope canon of American art in real time with nothing but the whims and tics and fiery blowouts of that fearsome instrument of his. That's what I think of when I think of how much I love this man's work. I think also of the natural gruffness and swagger of "Hard to Handle," the a cappella explosion on "Love Man," the cocksure simmer of "Knock on Wood," none of which are here.
But the issue with Very Best Of isn't simply that it doesn't contain enough material, it's that it's unable to really justify its own existence. On the theory that the prospective buyer will end up eventually acquiring all of Redding's albums, the Carla Thomas collaboration, and the first two posthumous LPs (the first of which, Dock of the Bay, is often listed as a proper studio album), there is but one cut on this disc -- the buoyant "I Can't Turn You Loose" -- that won't be duplicated. Each and every one of those other CDs is more essential than this one, and is at least its equal as a primer on the man's work; even his weakest LPs, The Soul Album and Pain in My Heart, are stronger educations. You'd think that placing Redding's most shining classics all together would be some sort of a revelation, putting an overwhelming glow around his body of work, but Redding's moment was so short that to chop it up seems like a dilution or skewing of a coherent narrative. And hearing the slow ones all end to end with a few relieving bits of rollick and bombast isn't representative, nor is it much fun, except maybe for sex, then have at it. But being totally honest: get the albums and everything else, go to iTunes and get "I Can't Turn You Loose," and adore all of it for the rest of your life. Skip this. Satisfaction (!) guaranteed.
[SEE ALSO:]
Otis Blue (1965)
The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul (1966)