Customer Reviews

Good to Me-Live at the Whiskey 2

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I saw Otis live in New Orleans in 1966. This album comes close to that "live" experience. It was recorded with Otis's "road band". It is live, rough and raw. And you can hear his down-to-earth friendliness shine through. Not a "must-have, but it is a "must hear"!

An expanded version of the 1982 LP "Recorded Live", this second volume of live recordings from West Hollywood's Whisky a Go Go is perhaps more energetic than polished, but isn't that how soul music should be played?

These eleven sides were recorded during the same 1966 series of concerts which produced "In Person at the Whisky a Go Go", and they're no less incendiary. Otis Redding and the nine-man band, which includes a three-piece horn section, play a delightfully tough and varied set, delivering amazing, sweaty renditions of fiery up-tempo raves, swaggering, mid-tempo soul grinds, and intense slow numbers.

There is an incredible amount of tension and urgency here. Redding was a God-gifted soul singer, a bit rough-voiced but enormously expressive, and a hugely talented songwriter, too, in an era when few artists recorded very much self-penned material. The set opens with a driving "I'm Depending On You", propelled by a muscular horn riff. Redding mixes R&B and gospel on "Good To Me", ending up with something which transcends both. He wrings every last ounce of emotion from the exquisitely melodic deep soul ballad "These Arms Of Mine". And he lets loose on gritty extended versions of "I Can't Turn You Loose" and "I've Been Loving You Too Long", until you start to think the roof must have been blown off the Whisky, because how else could all that tension possibly have been relieved?

Terrific sound, and terrific annotation, too. No fan of the great Otis Redding, or of classic Memphis soul in general, could possibly go wrong with this one.
Highly, highly recommended.

I must have missed this album when it was released by Atlantic in 1982. Shame on me. Otis live in April, 1966 is the Master at the top of his game. The greatest trilogy of soul albums is Otis' three from '65-'66 (Otis Blue, The Soul Album, Dictionary of Soul), and this Live @ Whiskey disc is Otis right in the middle of this run of masterpieces. The cover notes state that Al Jackson Jr. was in the house producing the recording. I sure wish he'd sat in with the band instead. The quality of the touring band is good, but not nearly the level of greatness of the HOF musicians that were behind Otis a year later at Monterrey. If you love Otis, you gotta-gotta have this disc in your collection.