It's all about soul.

 

What a night – what a night!

I hadn’t been feeling so well. It had been a long, hard day and it wasn’t going anywhere good for me. Then I watched ‘Otis Redding: Soul Ambassador’ on BBC Four, a reasonable biography of the life of Otis Redding, it was OK.

Then, WOW!

They followed it up with ‘Otis Redding and friends: STAX VOLT Revue 1967’. This was the fabled 1967 STAX records tour (programme recorded in Norway). Otis and the gang said how touring Britain changed them; well I can tell you the tour (and the Motown review) sure changed things here. Before my time, but not by that much. The aftershocks were still rippling out, I can tell you.

Let me say WOW! again.

Black and White is the best colour, ever. Thin ties, drainpipe trousers, narrow lapels and all the girls seemed to look like Julie Christie. Everyone was lean and hungry – by the 70’s it had all got a bit overweight, the hair a bit too long, the sideburns in the way and an unhappy outbreak of velvet, wide lapels and kipper ties which I would rather forget about.

This unforgettable Soul night started with Booker T and the MG’s ‘Green Onions’ and just got better and better with another instrumental from The Mar-keys, soooh good. Sam and Dave were fantastic, Otis was great.

It’s on BBC i-player, so wherever you live you have no excuse – you have seven six days left to blag some broadband, rob some Wi-Fi, or if you can grab terrestrial TV they usually repeat on Sunday night, late. I stayed up late and watched it through a second time it was so good.

In the Otis documentary it was good to see the MODS out and about in the land of a thousand dances.

But that Booker T and the MG’s. WOW! Hit that Hammond, Booker.T.

Neil Harris

(a don’t stop till you drop production)

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