Download Liner Notes - Bill Bentley
OTIS REDDING
LIVE AT THE WHISKY A GO GO:
THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS
Certain nights still stand boiling in time: when the music explodes from the bandstand and memories are grooved into the mind and heart with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. Such was true the evening of March 22, 1966 at the Paladium Ballroom in Houston. I was a 15-year-old teenager in tenth grade, but that day I knew I had to go see Otis Redding perform. His songs had conquered R&B radio stations KYOK and KCOH’s playlists on the AM dial. You couldn’t turn either on without hearing “Mr. Pitiful,” “Security” and more recently “Satisfaction.” Redding’s music had a power and urgency that grabbed you by the throat, like a huge hand was squeezing the very life out of your body. There wasn’t any other singer like him then, and those of us who had discovered his music knew we were listening to the very essence of what soul music really was. There was no way we could be anywhere else that evening, only eight short days before Otis Redding and band started their four-night assault on the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip.
The Paladium Ballroom was the finest African-American nightclub in Houston then. It was a wide one-story building that didn’t offer any glitz on the outside. But stepping inside was like entering a musical kingdom. There was an overpowering electricity in the large room when you entered the front door. All the mesmerizing nights we’d been there before, experiencing artists like James Brown & the Famous Flames, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, the Temptations, Bobby “Blue” Bland with Al “TNT” Braggs & the Joe Scott Orchestra, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge and others, came rushing back. It was like we were in a shrine, a shrine whose walls pulsated in time to the life-changing sounds roaring off the bandstand. Once the ballroom was full of the high and mighty Houston audience, people who lived their lives for the inspiration they received blasting off the stage, it felt like a spaceship was taking off the launching pad. About 30 miles away NASA was then being built, readying for the Apollo moon excursions, but inside the Paladium there was no greater place to be for extraterrestrial excursions. Otis Redding was going to take us into the stratosphere.
When the big Macon, Georgia man came charging out, it was like a professional football linebacker had taken off on a touchdown run. Redding’s force was seismic. He literally shook the table where me and my two friends were sitting near the stage. He had a physical overwhelmingness to his being, and commandeered the whole Paladium like he knew it. He would barrel into all his songs, some already hits and some not, with an undeniable knowledge that what he was doing had never been done. There was a confidence at the core of Otis Redding that was unique. For whatever reason he had entered that place where a singer can do no wrong. Even though he was country-raised, Redding didn’t let anything make a dent in his demeanor. He had come to decimate everything within the reach of his voice and there was no going back. His large backing band might have seen him do this show countless nights, but it was obvious each and every one of the musicians was still in Otis Redding’s thrall. They would sneak each other incredulous looks, as if to say, “Did you see what the boss man just did,” and then shake their heads in wonder. The drummer was a force of nature in his own right, popping the snare and pushing the group with a propulsion worthy of an out of control subway car. As song after song turned up the tumultuous excitement level inside the Paladium, the entire audience held on for dear life. The small dance floor in front of the stage was pack-and-jammed so tight that no one could move. The people there would stand in place and gyrate as best they could as they stared at Redding singing and shouting just above them. Half the audience behind them were standing in their chairs and holding on for dear life. Others had climbed on top of the tables, jumping and jiving for all they were worth. Not even James Brown’s wildest exhortations could equal what Redding could do. Wildness had never been so much fun. At midnight, when I had promised my parents I would be home since it was, after all, a school night, I ran to the wooden phone booth to call and ask for an extension. Luckily I got it too, because that night in Houston on March 22 didn’t end until 2 a.m. Otis Redding had taken us all the way to the promised land with a one-way ticket to pure bliss, opening eyes to what soul music could truly do: save our lives. The world turned that night, and luckily for all of us who received the spirit, it still is. Amen to that always. –Bill Bentley, co-producer: Live at the Whisky A Go Go: The Complete Recordings
