Otis Blue was recorded in roughly 22 studio hours, spread across two sessions inside a 28-hour window in July 1965, with an eight-hour break in the middle so the band could go and play their regular club gigs. It contains “Respect”, “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” and a version of “Satisfaction” that was released within weeks of the Rolling Stones’ own. It is routinely named the definitive Southern soul album.
Most records made that fast are demos. This one is on every serious list of the greatest albums ever made. This is a look at why, and at whether the reputation is deserved.
The facts
Released 15 September 1965 on Volt in the United States and Atlantic in the UK. Produced by Jim Stewart and Steve Cropper, engineered by Tom Dowd, recorded at Stax in Memphis on 9 and 10 July 1965 — with the exception of “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”, cut that April and re-recorded in stereo for the album.
The band is the Stax house band at its peak: Booker T. Jones and Isaac Hayes on keyboards, Steve Cropper on guitar, Duck Dunn on bass, Al Jackson Jr. on drums, with Wayne Jackson and Gene “Bowlegs” Miller on trumpets, Andrew Love on tenor and Floyd Newman on baritone.
It reached number 1 on the Billboard R&B albums chart, number 75 on the pop chart and number 6 in the UK. It has sold over 250,000 copies. Rolling Stone has placed it at 74, 78 and most recently 178 on its 500 Greatest Albums list; Pitchfork gave it a straight 10.
An album mostly of cover versions
Here is the fact that ought to undermine the record and does not: of the eleven tracks, only three are Redding originals. Three more are Sam Cooke songs. The rest includes Smokey Robinson, B.B. King, William Bell and the Rolling Stones.
The Sam Cooke presence is the emotional centre of the album. Cooke had been shot dead in December 1964, seven months before these sessions. “Shake”, “Wonderful World” and “A Change Is Gonna Come” are not filler; they are a young singer publicly working out what he owes to the man who invented the job he is doing.
“A Change Is Gonna Come” is the one that justifies the whole exercise. Cooke’s original is stately, orchestral, almost hymnal. Redding’s is rougher and more desperate, and it converts a statement of historical patience into something closer to a demand.
“Respect”
The story told about it is that “Respect” took a day to write, twenty minutes to arrange and one take to record. Even allowing for the way studio stories improve with age, the record sounds like that is true.
It is also, listened to now, a song that lost an argument. Redding’s version is a man asking his partner for respect when he gets home, and the emotional weight is on his exhaustion. Two years later Aretha Franklin rebuilt it from the ground up and made it mean something considerably larger. Redding himself reportedly acknowledged she had taken it from him.
That does not diminish the original. It does mean the original is best heard as what it is: a Memphis dance record with a great horn chart, not the anthem it later became in somebody else’s hands.
“I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”
Co-written with Jerry Butler, and the best thing on the record.
Everything Redding could do is in it. The voice starts contained and frays as it goes. The band holds an extraordinarily slow tempo without dragging. And the performance never resolves into comfort — it is a song about a relationship that is already over, sung by someone still in the middle of it.
The single version, cut in April and released in mono, reached number 2 on the R&B chart. The album carries the stereo re-recording. Purists prefer the single. They have a point, but it is a fine distinction.
“Satisfaction”
The Rolling Stones’ single had been out a matter of weeks. Covering it that fast was either opportunism or nerve, and probably both.
What makes it work is that the Stax band does not attempt the riff as written. The horns take it, which converts a guitar record into a soul record and changes its whole character — the Stones’ version is sardonic and bored, Redding’s is urgent and slightly baffled. It should be a novelty. It is not.
Why it works
Three reasons, and the first two are unusual.
The speed is the point. Twenty-two hours means nobody second-guessed anything. There was no time to smooth out a vocal or replace a part that was almost right. What you hear is a band and a singer making decisions in real time, and the record has a forward momentum that carefully assembled albums generally lack.
The covers create a coherent argument. Because Redding is interpreting rather than writing, the album becomes a statement about where he comes from — Cooke, the blues, Memphis, even the British bands who had taken American music and sold it back. Most 1965 soul albums were a hit single plus filler. This one has a shape.
The band. Booker T. & the M.G.’s plus the Memphis horns, playing at the peak of their collective understanding. The arrangements are economical to the point of severity. Nobody plays anything they do not need to play.
What Otis Blue changed
The album’s influence runs in three directions, and only one of them is obvious.
It made the soul LP a form. In 1965 an album by a soul artist was a contractual obligation: put the hit first, fill the rest, get it into shops. Otis Blue is sequenced, thematically argued and designed to be played through. Three years later everyone was doing this. Someone had to do it first.
It exported Southern soul to Britain. The album reached number 6 in the UK against 75 on the American pop chart, which is a startling gap. British audiences took Redding considerably more seriously than white America did at the time, and that reception fed directly into the mod and later northern soul scenes, and into the way British bands played for the rest of the decade.
It helped fix the word “soul”. The subtitle is Otis Redding Sings Soul, at a moment when the music was still commonly filed as rhythm and blues. Records and their packaging shape vocabulary, and this one arrived exactly as the term was settling.
There is a fourth thing, harder to measure. Redding had two years and three months to live when this came out. Everything he is now remembered for — the Monterey performance, “Dock of the Bay”, the posthumous canonisation — happens after it. Otis Blue is the record where he becomes the artist those things happened to.
Where it falls short
An honest review has to include the case against, and with a record this canonised almost nobody bothers.
It is front-loaded. Side one is close to perfect. Side two has “Shake”, “Satisfaction” and “You Don’t Miss Your Water”, but it also has a couple of tracks that are clearly there because the clock was running.
“My Girl” is the weak point. The Temptations’ version is definitive and everyone involved knew it. Redding’s reading adds grit but loses the sweetness the song is built on, and the result sits awkwardly.
The 32-minute running time cuts both ways. It never outstays its welcome, and it also does not go very deep. Compared with what Isaac Hayes would do at the same label four years later on Hot Buttered Soul, this is a collection of singles, brilliantly performed.
The stereo mix is not the one that made people’s reputations. Several of these performances were heard first, and best, in mono. If you only know the stereo album you are hearing a slightly different record from the one that shook 1965.
Where Otis Blue sits
Critics have been unusually direct about this one. Uncut’s Neil Spencer called it “arguably the definitive album of the soul era”. Robert Christgau called it “the first great album by one of soul’s few reliable long-form artists” — which is the more precise claim, because the problem with 1960s soul is that almost nobody made albums that worked as albums.
That is the record’s real historical function. It proved a soul LP could be more than a hit and nine pieces of filler, three years before anyone else was seriously trying. Everything Stax did afterwards in the album format follows from it.
The verdict
The reputation holds, with one adjustment. Otis Blue is not the deepest soul album ever made — for that, go to James Carr. It is the most alive. It is the sound of a great singer and a great band working at maximum speed and getting it right, and the slight roughness is inseparable from the achievement.
Start with “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”, then “A Change Is Gonna Come”, then play the whole thing in sequence. If side one does not convince you, nothing in 1960s soul will.
Which edition: the 2008 Rhino collector’s edition carries both the stereo and mono mixes plus live material and alternate takes. The mono is the one to play.
Frequently asked questions
When was Otis Blue released?
15 September 1965, on Volt Records in the United States and Atlantic in the UK, produced by Jim Stewart and Steve Cropper.
How long did Otis Blue take to record?
About 22 studio hours across two sessions within a 28-hour period on 9 and 10 July 1965, with an eight-hour break so the house band could play their booked club dates.
Did Otis Redding write “Respect”?
Yes. Aretha Franklin’s 1967 version is the famous one, but the song is Redding’s, and it appears here in its original form.
Is Otis Blue the best soul album ever made?
It is the most frequently named candidate and it belongs in any top five. Which one wins depends on what you want: this is the most vivid, James Carr’s is the deepest, and Hot Buttered Soul is the most ambitious.
Should I buy the mono or stereo version?
Mono, if you can. Several of these performances were mixed and heard in mono first, and the mono has more punch. The 2008 Rhino edition includes both.