Otis Redding Soul Ambassador. Documentary from the BBC.
First-ever TV documentary about the legendary soul singer Otis Redding, following him from childhood and marriage to the Memphis studios and segregated Southern clubs where he honed his unique stage act and voice. Through unseen home movies, the film reveals how Otis’s 1967 tour of Britain dramatically changed his life and music.
After bringing soul to Europe he returned to conquer America,first with the ‘love-crowd’ at the Monterey Festival and then with Dock of the Bay, which topped the charts only after his death at just 26. Includes rare and unseen performances, intimate interviews with Otis’s wife and daughter, and with original band members Steve Cropper and Booker T Jones. Also featured are British fans whose lives were changed by seeing him, among them Rod Stewart, Tom Jones and Bryan Ferry.
“I was there when all my favourites came up. My alltime favourite was a gospel singer…what was her name? Oh yeah, Mahalia Jackson. Oh I love her.”
– Charles Bradley (Johannasvisions, 2012)
Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.
~Mahalia Jackson
I close my eyes when I sing so I can feel the song better.
~Mahalia Jackson
He is, arguably, the most underrated of all the ’60s soul performers associated with Atlantic Records, although his records were more likely than those of most soul stars to become crossover hits.
~Dave Marsh
..Before and after he became a Black Muslim minister, this East Texas moralist-jokester mixed such timeless trifles as “Skinny Legs and All” (God, don’t you even remember that one?) and “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)” (a lucky last gasp occasioning a luckier album that came out for “sissies”) with a good-humored country wisdom that rivaled Smokey’s urban variant for pith and empathy.
~Robert Christgau
Although they are often viewed as diametric opposites, soul and country music are really flip sides of the same coin, and the two genres have greatly influenced one another. With his hillbilly name and trademark ten-gallon Stetson hat, Joe Tex was perhaps the most conspicuous musician to blur this generic and racial boundary. Like many soul singers (Al Green, Ray Charles, Isaac Hayes, to name a few) Tex was a fan of Hank Williams and wanted to be a country singer. Despite the fact that many country artists were taught by black musicians, Tex was unable to cross the country’s colour barrier, and he became a soul singer instead.
~The Rough Guide to Soul & R&B
Hold On What You’ve Got (the fantastic original version):
Tex recorded his first hit, “Hold On To What You’ve Got”, in November 1964 at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Tex was not convinced the song would be a hit and advised Killen not to release it. However, Killen felt otherwise and released the song in early 1965. By the time Tex got wind of its release, the song had already sold 200,000 copies. The song eventually peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and became Tex’s first number-one hit on the R&B charts, staying on the charts for 11 weeks and selling over a million copies by 1966. (wikipedia)
I feel that it is healthier to look out at the world through a window than through a mirror. Otherwise, all you see is yourself and whatever is behind you.
~Bill Withers
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, It’s not warm when she’s away, Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, And she’s always gone too long, Anytime she goes away.
~Bill Withers (Ain’t No Sunshine)
“If you cannot find peace within yourself, you will never find it anywhere else.”
~Marvin Gaye
I hope to refine music, study it, try to find some area that I can unlock. I don’t quite know how to explain it but it’s there. These can’t be the only notes in the world, there’s got to be other notes some place, in some dimension, between the cracks on the piano keys.
~Marvin Gaye
