His tragic plane crash on December 10, 1967, left Otis
Redding with an unfairly abbreviated career. It had only been seven years since
he released his first record, “Shout Bamalama,” on Confederate Records. Of
course, Redding’s best-loved sides came out on Stax/Volt, and Atco’s relentless
posthumous release campaign left the King of Soul with a hefty singles
discography 36-discs strong. With the exception of a couple of early records on
the Confederate and Alshire labels, they’re all on Shout Factory’s new box set Otis Redding: The Complete Stax/Volt Singles
Collection. That’s a total of seventy A and B sides, all presented in the
original, bone-vibrating mono mixes that best convey Booker T. & the M.G.s’
transcendent chunkiness.
Because he was the first soul star to make LPs as essential
as his singles, The Complete Stax/Volt
Singles isn’t all the Otis you’ll ever need. Otis Blue and Dictionary of
Soul are particularly indispensible, but so is Shout Factory’s new set,
which fills in all the gaps. Obviously, all of the hits are here, but the
inclusion of those posthumous releases and B-sides (would you believe the
classics “Mr. Pitiful” and “Hard to Handle” were flip sides?) give voice to a
lot of his hottest album cuts (“Ole Man Trouble,” “I’m Sick Y’all,” “Sweet
Lorene”), live performances (essential renditions of “I’ve Been Loving You Too”
and “Try a Little Tenderness” from the Monterey Pop Festival), and oddities (a
version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” he finishes off with some crazed, James
Brown shrieks), so we get a well-rounded portrait of the man’s career.
The packaging is gorgeous too, with full-size, full-color
reproductions of each A and B-side with all vintage dirt rings, pen marks,
punctures, wears, and tears intact from Billy Vera’s astonishing personal
record collection. What’s missing are any extensive notes or essays. We get
basic personnel information and that’s it. We don’t even get release dates or
chart positions. That’s a significant informational oversight. As far as musical
oversights go, there aren’t any, just seventy tracks of the most brain-boilingly
exciting soul ever made.
