Otis Clay Notes

Otis Clay - Sleeve Notes taken from a dutch 80/90s album

Otis Clay

Although he was on the brink of nationwide stardom in 1972 while on the same Memphis based Hi label that launched Al Green, Otis inexplicably never reached the same heights that Green did. But with his driving seven-piece band {featuring the unparalleled Chicago Fire horn section), Clay continues to epitomize the very finest in raw, emotionally supercharged soul.Like so many of his contemporaries, Otis Clay found his early inspiration in the gospel music he heard around his Waxhaw, Mississippi birthplace. His initial appearance on wax came as lead vocalist of the Gospel Songbirds, one of many such aggregations he joined after he moved to Chicago in 1957.

But the secular scene beckoned, and after an unissued session for Columbia, Otis signed with Chicago's One-der-ful Records in 1965. Often working with writer-producers Jimmy Jones and Eddie Silvers, Clay debuted with an intense soul ballad, "A Flame In Your Heart," and solidified his reputation with brisk sellers such as "I'm Satisfied," Cash McCall's "That's How It Is" and the hard-charging "Got To Find A Way." Otis switched to the Atlantic Records combine in mid-'68, inaugurating their Cotillion subsidiary with a Rick Hall-produced Muscle Shoals cover of the Sir Douglas Quintet's "She's About A Mover," eventually cutting three more singles for the firm.

But his most commercially successful period came under the productional wing of Willie Mitchell at Hi Records in Memphis. With Mitchell at the helm, Otis scored big with "Precious Precious," "If I Could Reach Out" and especially the original "Trying To Live My Life Without You," which reportedly sold half a million copies in 1972.

In 1975, Otis decided to take his recording career into his own hands. He opened an office at 2131 S. Michigan Ave. (formerly the Chicago branch location of King Records) and began producing his own sides, releasing them sporadically on his Echo label. "Victim Of Circumstance" was Echo's initial release in the spring of '75.

"A lot of things happened there. That's where the whole thing started," he recalls, "because that was my first venture into producing myself and arranging, the whole works." Prolific Southern soul writer George Jackson provided Otis with a potential smash in 1980, but Clay was a bit slow to follow through. "I called George in '80. and I was saying. 'George, hey man, let's get together and do some things.' So George flew in from Memphis, and we went in the studio here in Chicago," says Otis. "We recorded 'Cheatin' In The Next Room,' 'Messin' With My Mind,' another tune called 'If I Could Open Up My Heart. 'I sat on 'Cheatin' In The Next Room' for about two years, and I never got a deal on the album in this country," he says. "And this is ironic - the very same day I was getting ready to go to the studio to put the horns on 'Cheating' In The Next Room,' because the track had been laid ever since '80, but I was going to put some horns on it, and put some more voices on it.""As I was walking out the door, I had the radio on, and right from the intro. it hit me! I said,'What!!' and I listened, and here comes Z.Z. Hill singing 'Cheating' In The Next Room!'" But Otis readily admits his old friend had every right to cut the tune.

Another Jackson contribution, the relentlessly cooking "Messin' With My Mind," did well around Chicago, but failed to break nationally. "A lot of the radio stations. especially the black radio stations, said, 'We don't play blues,'" says Otis. "It's not really a blues record, but it got thrown in that category. "We was selling 17,000 in Chicago, it was a big record, but we never could get the other radio stations to go with it." Clay's Echo sides range from the mellow, soulful balladry of "Check It Out" and "I'm Gonna Hate Myself In The Morning" to the irresistibly danceable "The Only Way is Up" and the brassy groove of "All I Need Is You." There's a medium-tempo treatment of Eddie Floyd's "Special Kind Of Love" and a brilliant remake of Tyrone Davis' classic "Turn Back The Hands Of Time" that could give his pal Tyrone serious cause for concern.

Soul, blues, gospel - it's virtually impossible to pigeon-hole the music of Otis Clay. "I just sing,man. I don't ever put myself in a category," he says. "I got a long way to go with this thing, because I got a lot of music in me.

"I like the idea of being free to create."

- Bill Dahl

Also available by Otis Clay:

Live In Tokyo (1983) - where the Soul of Otis Clay drips on the dance floor

Watch Me Now (1989) - produced in Memphis by Willie Mitchell