Shuggie Otis
Inspiration Information

THE REVIEW

"World Psychedelic Classics 2: California Soul" is written on the cover of this album.

However, listening to the remastered version of the third work by the then twenty-two-year-old Shuggie Otis, it's not difficult to understand why Sean O'Hagan of the High Llamas wanted - or was asked - to write some of the notes inside the accompanying booklet. I wouldn't call it a misleading label, but to be fair, there's very little psychedelia here, except for the final thirteen minutes of "Freedom Flight" (a title and a program), which directly hark back to the great Californian season of the acid tests with Jerry Garcia in the spotlight.

But here we are in 1974. Musically, we can rightly talk about a hybrid period: with the prolific progressive era at dusk and the nascent punk still intangible on the horizon, the black musicians, almost always indifferent to the colorful and ephemeral currents, were nestled in their crucible made of soulful music and a certain mysticism that fades into the mists of time.

Of the thirteen tracks present here, only the first nine, lasting just thirty-two minutes, composed the original album, while the last four are taken from Shuggie Otis's debut album, including "Strawberry Letter 23", undoubtedly the song with the greatest commercial impact later made famous by the Brothers Johnson. The muted and ethereal flow of the instrumental tracks (about half), can be linked to a certain taste for elusive melody, typical of Steely Dan later emulated, coincidentally, by the High Llamas.

A son of art (his father Johnny was a renowned R&B man) and a guitarist of considerable merit, Shuggie Otis invoked quite challenging comparisons, read Sly Stone or Jimi Hendrix, without however possessing their charisma, and if we want to say it, without even treading the same musical paths. Among the followers who, in the years to come, deserved to take up the legacy of such a seed, it seems spontaneous to mention Prince, an extreme synthesizer, centrifuge, and condenser of decades of authorial black music.

After this album, the curtain would practically fall, but at least for a short period, it was legitimate and appropriate to place more than one hope in him for the future of a certain level of pop-soul. A rediscovery is in order.