1963
PAIN IN MY HEART * OTIS REDDING * LONDON ATLANTIC 9833 * UK
Otis Redding's first release in the UK, was his sixth (not counting reissues) in the US; he had first recorded as Otis Redding and The Shooters in 1960. Pain In My Heart was heard in the night clubs and dance hall's in Great Britain at a time when the notion of Soul music had just taken hold in the imagination of the youthful Modernist (Mods) movement, and it's tortured lyrics and 'Soulful' delivery embodied perfectly the, then, new concept. Given this piece of fortuitous timing, and the fact of his early and tragic death making him, when it was in its prime, Soul music's first big casualty, may have helped to single him out in the wider publics attention as the embodiment of Soul music. Yet in fact Otis Redding was a relatively late comer to the genre; after touring with the Little Richard band as a featured vocalist all his early recordings both with The Shooters and solo were in fact little more than imitations of Little Richard's wild Rock and Roll singing, even his stage name was Rockhouse Redding! This would be ok if we were talking about the 1950s but this was in the period from 1960 up to his first Soul release These Arms Of Mine in 1962, by which time the idiom had been developed and shaped into the sound by many others that he was able to step into straight of the peg; just to compare Otis Redding's 1960 recording of Gamma Lamma, with say Ben E. Kings 1960 recording of Spanish Harlem illustrates this point completely. All this is not to say Otis Reading was not a good Soul singer, or even a great one, it's just to put some perspective on the mythologies that corporate commercial interests tend to promote.
See also:
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| These Arms Of Mine |