SUTC: Ken Boothe covers Otis
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Artist:
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Album:More of Ken Boothe
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One of the few real criticisms levelled at Otis Redding throughout his short but spectacular career was that his vocals, rough-hewn straight from small town Georgia as they were, sometime lacked a degree of sophistication. Well folks, as Al Jolson famously said in the first ever "talkie", "You ain't seen nothing yet", as here is Ken Boothe performing "Try a Little Tenderness" for Coxsone Dodd's Studio One label in 1968, with an accent that is pure Denham Town, Kingston, Jamaica.
The LP from which this is taken, "More of Ken Boothe" has rather disappeared on vinyl, but you can find downloadable copies on the Interweb. It opens with a remarkable reggae take on Simon and Garfunkel's "Richard Cory"; due to the taboo about suicide within Jamaican society, the verse that shocks the listener by revealing the subject's shooting himself is simply omitted, utterly changing the mood of the song.
Comments (5)
Man...you're battin' a thousand today.
Nice one..hadn't heard it.
In my mind Mr.Boothe is the king of versioning..picking good songs and doing a lot with them.
You Left The Water Running
Is It Because I'm Black?
Everything I Own
That's The Way Nature Planned It
Ain't No Sunshine
You Send Me
Let's Get It On
and that's just a small sample.
I too had not heard this or this artist before. I like.
Wow, what vocal chops and great use of reverb and studio sweetening by Coxonne! Pretty close to improvement on the original, eh?