188 Goodbye Otis Redding - Love Man

Chart  entered  :  9  July  1969

Chart  peak : 43

Otis's  departure  from  our charts  followed  his  death  eighteen  months  earlier  when  his   plane ( he  wasn't  the  pilot )   carrying  him  and  various  other  musicians  flew  into  Lake  Monona  , Wisconsin. Although  Otis's  body  was  recovered  the  next  day  and  a  guitarist  with  the  Bar-Kays  survived, the  cause  of  the  crash  has  never  been  determined. The  song  he'd  recorded  four  days  earlier  "( Sittin ' On ) The  Dock  Of  The  Day"  became  the  first  posthumous  number  one  in  the  US  and  reached  number  3  here, his  only  Top  10  hit  in  the  UK. In  fact  for  all  his  subsequent  deification,  most  of  his  hits  here  were  fairly  small  ones, usually  failing  to  reach  the  Top  20.

Shortly  after  Otis's  death  Stax  received  another  nasty  surprise  when  the  legalities  surrounding  Warner  Brothers's  purchase  of  Atlantic  revealed  that  the  latter  owned  all  his  recordings  including  any  unreleased  masters . Their  cash  cow  was  gone  in  every  sense of  the  word. Otis's  writing  partner  and  producer  Steve  Cropper  had  already  completed and  released  the  album  "The  Dock  Of The  Bay",  a  transatlantic  number  one  ( and  the  first  by  a  black  male  here ),  by  the  time  this  came  to  light  but  Atlantic  took  charge  of  the  following  three  albums  of  previously  unreleased  material.

"Love  Man"  was  the  title  track  of  the  second  of  these. It  was  recorded  in  1967  with  Booker  T  and  the  MGs  in  the  studio. After  Al  Jackson  Junior's  opening  drum  roll  Otis  advertises  his  carnal  prowess  over  a  mid-paced  funk  groove  like  a  less  abrasive  James  Brown. There's  an  intriguing  line  in  the  first  verse  where  he  inaccurately  describes  himself  as  having "long  hair, real  fair  skin"  which  has  been  interpreted  as  a  sop  to  the  hippies  picking  up  on  him  after  the  Monterey  Festival  performance  or  it  may  just  be  a  playful  dig  at  Cropper. In  any  case  the  line  becomes  "dirty  brown  skin"  when  the  verse  is  repeated. Along  with  this  being  one  of  his  lowest-peaking  hits,  the  album  failed  to  chart  suggesting  that the  initial  burst  of  interest  following  his  death  was  beginning  to  wane. The  song  returned  to  the  album  charts  in  1987  when  it  was  featured  in  the  big-selling  Dirty  Dancing  soundtrack.

"Free  Me"  the  next  single  taken  from  the  album  was  a  slow-burner  with  Otis  back  in  "Mr  Pitiful"  mode  based  on  Cropper's  simple  motif  with  blasts  of  horn  and  loud  organ  squelches  from  Booker  T. It  failed  to  make  the  US Top  100  too. The  third  single  from  the  LP, "Look  At  That  Girl"  an  uptempo  dance  tune  not  released  until  February  1970 , made  no  impression.

When  Atlantic  squeezed  out  a  fourth  posthumous  LP  "Tell  The  Truth"  in  the  summer  of  1970  they  didn't  release  any  singles  from  it  in  the  UK  preferring  to  release  his  version  of  Sam  Cooke's  "Wonderful  World"  given  the  Stax  treatment  on  his  1965  album  "Otis  Blue" . It's  OK  but  I'd  stick  with  the  original. In  1971  they  put  out  a  live  version  of  "I've  Been  Loving  You  Too  Long"  from  his  legendary  Monterey  performance  from  the  US  hit  LP  "Historic  Performances" which  has  Hendrix  on  Side  One. Watching  this  on  youtube  it's  good  to  see  the  great  man  working  the  crowd  in  his  green  suit  though  it  could  be  better  filmed. When  the  camera  isn't  fixed  on  the  back  of  his  head  it's  pointing  directly  into  a  spotlight.

From  then  on  it  was  merely  a  string  of  reissues  of  the  hits  throughout  the  seventies  and  eighties apart  from  the  release  in  1972  of  his  version  of  "White  Christmas"  which  he  reconstructs  in  his own  inimitable  style. In  1992  a  "new"  album  "Remember  Me"  was  issued  but  contained  little  original material  , mainly  alternate  takes  of  previously  released  songs. It  wasn't  well-received  and  didn't
chart.

Since  his  death  Otis  has  been  put  on  a  pedestal  as  a  beacon  of  talent  and  unsullied  integrity  to  inspire  future  generations.  His  untimely  passing  meant  we  never  had  to  hear  him  sing  Who's  Zooming  Who  or  The  Best  and   its  random  nature  had  none  of  the  sordid  trappings  that  attended  the  departures  of  Messrs  Cooke  and  Gaye. As  we  know,  a  certain  singer  we'll   be  meeting    pretty  soon  named  his  son  after  his  idol  though  you  suspect  that  if  Otis  had  stormed  the  Capitol  Building  it  would  have  been  for  a  better  cause  than  the  right  to  watch  a  pack  of  animals  tearing  another  apart. More  recently  a  pair  of  hip  hop  giants  Jay-Z  and  Kanye West  made  the  2011    single  "Otis"  which  cut  up  "Try  A  Little  Tenderness  to  horrific  effect.  A  number  28  hit  , it  illustrated  the  continuing  potency   of  his  name.