ME SO DUMB: when I saw this listed, I jumped at the chance to review it, thinking that it was a compilation of duets between two of the greatest soul singers that ever lived.
I donโt know what planet I was on that morning. Clearly, Redding and Franklin could never have recorded an albumโs worth of duets, because poor Otis was dead and gone by the end of 1967, and Urethra (as my gay friends at school called her) didnโt hit her stride until 1968.
So, what do we have here? Itโs simply a double CD, one of which is a 23-track Aretha Franklin โbest ofโ, the other of which is a 27-track Otis Redding โbest ofโ.
In theory, slinging two such great soul singers together makes a lot of sense; the reality is somewhat flawed.
Redding was at an unassailable peak when that plane went down, creating a legend and forever preventing him from embarrassing himself further down the line by embarking on duets with Mariah Carey or doing half-assed โ80s synth-pop projects.
While a lot of the songs here are covers of well-worn songs (โMy Girlโ, โSatisfactionโ), he puts his inimitable big-lipped wet-kiss of a voice on every one of them. Itโs an unlovely instrument on the face of it, but thereโs a warmth and an unforced emotive quality thatโs always right there, in your face, along with terrific control and very tightly focused nuance of expression. Thereโs no getting around the fact, though, that had he lived five or six more years he would probably have made music that put just about everything here in the shade. Everything, that is, except for โTry A Little Tendernessโ and โIโve Been Loving You Too Longโ, two songs that could wrench your heart out of your chest cavity, such is the sheer emotive impact.
While Reddingโs small discography will always remain without serious blemish, the queen of soul, Aretha Franklin, was able to commit heinous sins later in her career. It almost seemed as though each time she put on a few more pounds, her musical indiscretions had to get loaded with more saccharine sounds. They save the worst for last, so at least the careful listener can choose to omit her odious 1986 duet with George Michael, โI Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)โ.
Whoever compiled this โbest ofโ had our best interests at heart, however, because her best years (1967 through the mid-โ70s) are well represented, and the โ80s and onwards are blessedly present in only a few small doses.
But I admit that I do have something of a problem with Aretha Franklin. Thereโs no doubt that she has one hell of a big, strong gospel hollerinโ voice, and respect to that. (Speaking of her calling card, โRespectโ, perhaps the โtogetherโ concept of this double CD came from the fact that Redding contributes his own version of this song also). I just donโt like it that much. One or two songs are great, but anything more and I need to leave the room: even when she sings a song demanding of sensitivity, like โ(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Womanโ, there simply is none. Her voice is always the same, never pretty or pensive. Even Janis Joplinโs shriek is a good deal more tolerable to these old ears.
Thatโs just me. She is the queen of soul, after all, and thereโs a wealth of good stuff here, great performances all, in there own way. Audiences who have grown up in an era where pop singers have songs written for them, or write their own, may find it hard to comprehend that many of the songs are covers. They may wonder why she bothers with โSon Of A Preacher Manโ or โLet It Beโ or โBridge Over Troubled Waterโ. She does, however, wrap her tonsils around these tunes with authority, and give them her own soul twist.
So, then, two pretty damn fine selections by two of the best soul singers, on two CDs that you buy together. Well, thatโs still weird to me. Why would you have to have them Siamese twinned? I guess it comes down to whether the consumer wants a dose of both at the same time, and whether the price appeals.
One thing I was astonished by was the sound quality. Iโve become accustomed to โ60s soul sounding piercingly thin on a decent hi-fi set-up and tend to avoid listening to it as a result on anything less than a crappy iPod dock. But the production values and mastering here are superb. While the recording quality obviously varies from track to track, and Franklinโs disc sounds a bit better because most of the tracks were recorded a bit later, itโs fair to say that in both cases the voices come at you with all the force and richness they did the first time round, while the instruments have the kind of transparency and separation in the mix that only the better studios could have allowed. They even have deep bass, and hallelujah to that! GARY STEEL
Sound = 4/5
Music = 3.5/5
Otis Redding – Try A Little Tenderness by bebepanda