Whew! (#2)
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Forget about it. Otis Redding’s performance at the Monterey Pop Festival is hands down one of the great all time stage shows ever. The video above has the ass-end of “Shake,” which opened the set. Then it goes in to the subject of today’s post, “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” He got up in front of those hippies and just dropped some science.
I really admire Otis for this one performance, because usually musicians put in an uncomfortable situation (like him playing before a basically all-white audience, which was unusual for soul singers at the time) generally don’t give their all. He just got up and owned the stage. Seriously.
17 comments
these viddys are insane! performances to die for, killer musicianship, pure transcendent entertainment. thanks for posting them, chris!
Amazing. Thanks for the videos. I miss performances like tihs. There's a difference between just performing and really getting into it.
i don't think music was quite so segregated as you suggest in the sixties.
you could hear everything from "papas got a brand new bag" to "day tripper" all on your friendly AM rock n' roll station. a lot of people were into B & W music simultaneously the whole decade. The Beatles and the Supremes ruled the charts in 64, for example, and toured together with Sam Cooke, Little Richard, etc., in earlier years. Motown, JB, Jimi of course, the list goes on and on.
Of course, there was black radio too. And there was a black concert circuit, but there was plenty of intersection, too, in the pop market. If Otis had lived, Dock Of THe Bay would have taken him everywhere, it was an enormous pop hit, and not because he'd died.
I don't know when this changed, but I do remember that early MTV wouldn't play Prince.
As for Monterey, Jimi's performance is beyond amazing. it's the US debut of the Experience, I believe, and there he is: Instant Superstar - 100% fully formed, fearless, fierce, & On Fire.
"It was only with the phenomenal success of Michael Jackson and his "Thriller" album of 1983 that MTV and its harsh color barrier format were broken."
http://www.indiana.edu/%7Et311/timeline/1980aswart.html
chills. holy shit.
W
-note to self, buy chris a shiny teal suit for first CR show, 40L right?
shiny suit hmm,
perhaps a cape and an envelope follower is what's required?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgL7vikXQsA
Bootsy - "player of the year" tour
It's worth noting that Otis was the only soul act at Monterey, and the only black performer (Jimi being only half black, of course.) And it was considered a big risk putting him on the bill at all. Monterey was the very beginning of his cross-cultural appeal in the US; he already had white people digging him in Europe from the famous Stax/Volt tour there earlier that year. So, he began his assault on the white folks of America on June 16th, 1967. He wrote "Dock Of The Bay" in November of that year while on tour in Europe, recorded it on December 6th and 7th, and died on December 10th. Keep in mind that most of the artists you mention were rock or pop performers. Real soul was not very popular with white people until the last couple years of the 60s, and "Dock Of The Bay" was largely responsible for it.
(I may not know much, but I know my soul music. I have _every_ Stax/Volt single. All of them. Every single one. I'm also fairly certain I have everything that Otis ever recorded, alternate takes and live shows included.)
As for the Hendrix performance, I know it's one of rock's shining moments, what with the flaming guitar and all, but if you just listen to his show and don't watch it, you'll note that he's completely piss out of tune for the entire thing, like, really bad, and the rhythm section are so fucking high, well, they're really not on their game.
That may be a Bad Thing To Say, but there it is. I have a vinyl record that has the Otis Redding performance on one side and the Hendrix performance on the other, and I've only listend to the Hendrix side twice, and I _love_ Hendrix. It's quite bad, I'm sorry to say.
-CR
I have that record too, the grey one, ha.
I really don't think anyone attending gave a damn that Hendrix was out of tune. He looked modern as fuck after the Mamas and the Papas, et al, performed, as if he was set to sweep away the status quo. I'm talking impact, not musical impeccability.
Jimi Hendrix is half white??? That's news to me, unless you mean to say his band was 2/3's white, or that his music was rock.
Stax/Volt was gutbucket stuff, and though they had some big pop hits, I see your point. Still, JB had several funky bonafide pop hits. Sex Machine ruled AM radio when it came out, and so did "papa". By the late 60's, real gritty stuff like the Isleys 'it's your thing' was regularly heard on pop radio. By the early seventies, Marvin, Stevie, Curtis, etc. were all having very soulful pop hits.....
I didn't say half white. I was given to understand that he's half Creole. (Which, one could argue, makes him 3/4 or 5/8 black, I guess.) He certainly looks Creole. But I like your definition better. However, the Stax band was half white, too.
I dunno. I don't know a lot about Hendrix, and I'm certainly willing to be wrong there. Other than Chess and Stax/Volt, I've not read a lot about various musicians' biographies, because I usually don't care. Hendrix' racial makeup absolutely goes on the list of things I don't give a shit about.
-CR
"It's worth noting that Otis was the only soul act at Monterey, and the only black performer (Jimi being only half black, of course.)"
And Lou Rawls, half of Booker T & the MGs, and Hugh Masekela aren't black?
"And it was considered a big risk putting him on the bill at all."
Only because he was an unknown and John Phillips had originally wanted but couldn't get a different, better known band for that slot. I can't remember who it was but they talk about it a lot on the DVD bonus features.
Oh yeah, it was Dionne Warwick who dropped out at the last minute. And Chuck Berry was invited but turned it down.
http://www.dvdjournal.com/reviews/c/completemontereypop_cc.shtml
And I forgot to mention members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the Electric Flag.
It's interesting to note here that history is an incredibly maleable form of information. The section in "Soulsville, U.S.A." which I garnered my information from makes it sound like the Monterey folks had to be talked in to having Otis perform because they didn't want any soul acts. I suppose that the Stax history of the matter and the promoter's history of the matter could be considered extremes of the story, and somewhere in the middle is the truth.
That said, it doesn't really matter. I can't stand conversations like this, personally, since the only record that matters (the record itself) stands fine.
-CR
Watching these videos lately gives me the chills no ordinary Idols-wannabe is able to give - thanks, guys! (On the other hand: shit, I'm not half a musician I wanted to become. :-D)
Color's not an issue, it's all in the heart. Music is all that counts. 'Lav änd piis' as we say here in Finland - i.e. love and peace, pronounced in Finnish stylee.
Amen. I'm mostly Norwegian, but I take your point.
-CR
i have no argument with the fact that america sleeps on much of its greatest music, particularly black music. That would explain why guys like Sam Cooke had to go on Shindig and sing "Blowin' In The Wind" (you can see it on youtube).
But it's also true that Aretha herself was a big crossover star in the sixties, and it was for her gospel-soul based stuff, not the watered-down Dionne Warwick wannabe shit that Columbia made her record before Atlantic came into the picture.
We're just a schizo country. In the 50's they played Ray Charles, but they had to have Pat Boone cover the Little Richard hits. Maybe being blind makes black men more cuddly to the mainstream?
you just made me buy the definitive Otis Redding box set I've been craving for a while. tasty!
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