Rolling Stone – Album Review – March 15, 2001 Billboard – Album Review – March 31, 2001 SPIN – Album Review – March 2001 Philadelphia Inquirer – Feature – March 25, 2001 Philadelphia Inquirer – Feature – March 25, 2001 Barnes&Noble.com – Album Review – March 27, 2001 Amazon.com – Album Review – March 27, 2001 Other Music – Album Review – March 27, 2001 DustyGroove.com – Album Review – March 27, 2001 Louisville Courier-Journal – Album Review – March 31, 2001 Rolling Stone – Album Review – March 15, 2001 Shuggie Otis Inspiration Information 4 Stars Guitar prodigy Shuggie Otis cut his gap teeth in the Sixties, in his legendary dad's R&B-soul revue, the Johnny Otis Show. Recording his first album in his teens, he played with everybody from T-Bone Walker to Frank Zappa to Bob Dylan; in the mid-Seventies, he was even invited to replace Mick Taylor in the Rolling Stones. Otis' smooth, trippy soul-funk opus, Inspiration Information -- first released in 1974, now remastered and reissued by David Byrne's Luaka Bop label with four bonus tracks from 1971's Freedom Flight -- was his third album for Epic records; in the Stevie Wonder soul-auteur vein, he wrote, sang and played almost every instrument on the album. Songs like "Happy House" and "Strawberry Letter 23" (a Number One R&B hit for the Brothers Johnson) embraced the incense-and-peppermint psychedelia of the times without falling out of the pocket. The electronic grooves of "XL-30" and the Isaac Hayes-like power of "Not Available" reveals an expansive creativity that appeared unlimited -- maybe even a Prince-size talent in the making. But in the late Seventies, Otis largely faded from the scene, only to become a favorite of crate-digging DJs. This first-ever CD pressing of Inspiration Information should help change that. (RS 864) ANDY GENSLER Billboard – Album Review – March 31, 2001 SHUGGIE OTIS World Psychedelic Classics 2: California Soul -- Inspiration Information VITAL REISSUES Inspiration Information, the brainchild of guitar prodigy Shuggie Otis, more than justifies the cult following garnered in the years since its (largely ignored) 1974 release. Son of R&B legend Johnny Otis, Shuggie was a late-'60s celebrity due to his Super Session duets with Al Kooper. Opting out of arena rock -- he reputedly refused an offer to join the Rolling Stones -- the 19-year-old Otis spent three years in the studio generating this one-man opus. His multitracked rhythms recall the laid-back funk of the Meters embroidered with psychedelic filigree, and his voice resembles Allan Toussaint's. But in every other regard, this is singular, sexy music, dislocated in time. Drum machines propel "Island Letter" and the beat-box-plus-organ stabs of "XL-30" predate England's Young Marble Giants by several years. Also featured are four bonus cuts from the artist's 1971 set Freedom Flight, including "Strawberry Letter 23," which was later a hit for the Brothers Johnson. Heard here in its original form (with a surprise prog-guitar coda), the song conveys the impression of "Good Vibrations" being played by a lone musician. Unbelievably wonderful. SPIN – Album Review – March 2001 Shuggie Otis World Pyschedelic Classics 2: California Soul: Inpiration Information 9 out of 10 On the inner sleeve of the 1971 pressing of Sly Stone's funk monument There's a Riot Goin' On, Epic Records gives a rundown of new names on its roster: Poco, Kris Kristofferson, and some L.A. blues guitarist named Shuggie Otis. Therein, in a blurb for his upcoming Freedom Flight, Otis promised "forest music, graveyard music... Paul Newman going down a freeway." Throw Arthur Lee and Eddie Fisher in through the sunroof, and you're there. Freedom Flight contained Otis' "Strawberry Letter 23," a funky-acoustic missive that became a smash for the Brothers Johnson in '77. Otis' letter to his better opens: "Hello my love / I heard a kiss from you" and ends with her heart fluttering in harmony with his electric coda. The tune gave soul a fresh coat of pink cashmere long before Prince sang about "soul psychedelicide," even if its author faded into crate-digger myth. A prodigy who grew up playing with his old man, hand-jivin' R&B legend Johnny Otis, Shuggie peaked with the Cali soul-stirrings of 1974's Inspiration Information, which provides the bulk of this essential reissue. Big Shug sounds as if he's awoken from Sly's pain to imagine a world in bloom. How could he not sing "Smile, love, and get on down"? On "Aht Uh Mi Hed," Otis joyously proclaims "Aht uh mi hed of a time" as an organ bobs along with a rhythm box before strings and acoustic strums spirit us out of his mind. Elsewhere, we're (quite) taken through clear-eyed soul, blues, funk, and pop, then dropped home with our astonished smiles. But don't trip on the categories: "Playgrounds will laugh if you try to ask, 'Is it cool?'" As a teenage music student, Otis was assigned to write imaginary soundtracks; meanwhile, composer Galt MacDermot was writing real ones, scoring Hair in '67 for Joe Papp's Public Theater before the musical blew up on Broadway. MacDermot's gritty, piano-driven instrumentals enlisted boom-bap experts like drummer Bernard Purdie and have been recently reanimated via Busta Rhymes and Prince Paul. Up From the Basement culls unreleased material spanning '68 to '73, including funk-outs written for a Shakespearean festival long before The Bombity of Errors. Straight from acetate, some of these oldies ("Woe Is Me") hiss and crackle at their first sunshine in decades. "Ripped Open by Metal Explosions" has a somber piano and guitar that'll tingle the shrapnel in your hip socket. The malevolent strings of "Rhinoceros Main Theme" ebb into a gorgeous trumpet solo by Jon Faddis, uncle of West Coast indie hip-hop neo-freak Quasimoto, who cribbed MacDermot on his sample-bent LP The Unseen. But MacDermot and Otis deserve our love because they made great music, not because they've been sampled to life or because the hipster in the Fred Kirby cowpoke shirt is suddenly on Rare Groove's dick. Get with 'em. They'll love you back. DAVE TOMPKINS Philadelphia Inquirer – Feature – March 25, 2001 SHUGGIE OTIS' CLASSIC RETURNS By Tom Moon INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC It took years to make. And when it finally came out in late 1974, some say it was only in stores a few weeks. Hardly anybody heard it. But in the ensuing decades, Shuggie Otis' Inspiration Information became one of pop's phantom classics, a record passed from tape deck to tape deck with ceremonial reverence, known to the cognoscenti (Lenny Kravitz and the Roots' Ahmir "?love" Thompson are big fans), yet unavailable to the public. All that is about to change. On Tuesday, Inspiration Information (Luaka Bop * * * 1/2 ) gets another chance when it makes its CD debut. Although Otis didn't find an audience in '74, his sweet soul vocals and understated funk sound right on time now, foreshadowing the sultry jams of D'Angelo and the languid reveries of Morcheeba, suggesting an expansive approach to trip-hop that has eluded modern practitioners, hinting at new collisions between lush strings and jazz improvisation. Working mostly alone, the teenage guitarist and singer took three years to finish Inspiration Information, a luxury for a little-known talent, even in those artist-friendly days. "It sort of seems like a dream now," Otis, 47, says from his Northern California home. "I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted. There was no schedule. I was basically working on whatever was important to me at the time, and Columbia [Otis' label] supported me." Everything the soft-spoken artist has learned since - what it means to be a hot commodity, to work the unglamorous blues circuit, to be advised by executives with "not a scrap of music" in them - has reinforced his appreciation for those slow Los Angeles days when the stars aligned and a new auteur's approach to free-form soul was born. If Otis is bewildered by the fanaticism that has come to surround Inspiration, he is also painfully aware that in the current industry climate, he could never replicate the conditions under which it was made. "I mean, [it] was a different business. . . . I'd worked with my dad [rhythm-and-blues singer Johnny Otis] in the studio, but nobody knew what kind of record this was going to be. That was not, in those days, a bad thing." Working mostly alone, handling all the parts himself, Otis wrote Inspiration's songs quickly, aided by a primitive drum machine. He recorded sketches of ideas, then pondered the lyrics while on the road with his father's R&B revue. He began writing words to the songs at the insistence of his father, best known for the '50s hit "Willie and the Hand Jive." "We had this camper, and I remember coming back [to Los Angeles] from a tour. My dad had this TV appearance to do or something. He told me `Why don't you stay out here and work on those songs?' That's when I wrote `Inspiration Information' - in an hour while I was waiting for him." Eventually Otis, who began playing guitar publicly at 12 and wore dark glasses and a painted mustache in his father's band to look older, had to make a critical decision. "The idea that had been floating around with people at Columbia `was Shuggie going to sing?' " he recalls. "My father and I talked about that, and he made me realize that the only way I'd ever feel halfway comfortable [with the outcome] was to sing myself." Though blessed with a sweet, buoyant voice and a knack for subtle inflections, Otis was too shy to record with anyone in the studio. "I was so insecure about the vocals. . . . They were like a chore I had to get done. I knew what the notes were supposed to be, and I suppose I rehearsed a little bit, but I didn't really work a whole lot on the performances." Otis says he was influenced by much of the rock activity of the day - during the time he recorded Inspiration at Los Angeles' Columbia Studios, he bumped into Arthur Lee and Love, Chicago, Sly Stone and others. But on cuts such as the title track and "Aht Uh Mi Hed," he had specific ideas he wanted to communicate. "At that time there was the understanding that you could write lyrics and they didn't have to have any meaning. Well, I wanted the songs to mean something, at least along the lines of a fantasy or something outside of your normal experience. . . . That's what I was striving for, to free the mind of the listener and free my own mind. . . . But my first real goal was to make music that sounded like a happy time, like having a good time in the world." Inspiration definitely has that feeling. Its loping instrumental forays and delicately layered funk align perfectly with the expansive soul and R&B being made by Stone, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and others at the time. Some pieces, such as the single "Aht Uh Mi Hed," are triumphs of slithering sensuality. Others are more extroverted, upbeat celebrations of love and lust. But Inspiration isn't just party music. There's a jazz tinge to several tunes, as well as a harmonic sophistication Otis acquired playing with Al Kooper and Frank Zappa. Otis was a daring musician: The organ-based "XL-30" changes key in mid-phrase, tearing brazenly through tonal centers as the syncopated rhythm bubbles merrily along. In addition to the nine songs of Inspiration, the reissue features four compositions from Otis' 1971 album Freedom Flight including the infectious "Strawberry Letter 23," which became a hit for the Brothers Johnson in 1977. If Inspiration's extraordinary gestation was possible only in the freewheeling early '70s, its fate in the marketplace was characteristic of the business realities that came to define the end of that decade. "Shortly after I completed the album, turned it in and it was printed up, we [Otis and his father] were dropped from the label. Both of us were working on new stuff." (Two years before, Columbia had built a studio behind the Otis' home.) "We were pretty shocked. It was like I'd had this big thrill, and now came this big letdown. . . . "I said `Oh, it's no big deal, we'll get another [label] right away.' With the popularity we had at the time, I thought it would be easy. We still don't have a big-label deal. That's why [Inspiration] wasn't followed up." The album did earn Otis fans in the music community. He was asked to join the Rolling Stones, Spirit, and Blood, Sweat & Tears, and each time declined. He didn't want to be a sideman: "I always felt I had something to offer, and I wanted to get out and do it, be the leader of it. I'd already been a sideman with my dad." He sought executives who would let him pursue his blues-funk vision, but didn't find any. "Some of them had their ideas of what I should do. They'd mention producers and all that, which offended me. As usual, they didn't understand what I was trying to do." After years of frustration with the industry, Otis returned to more traditional blues in the early '80s. In addition to working with his father, he has recorded and toured regularly with a small combo, and says he hopes to one day get the chance to record a proper follow-up to Inspiration Information. No matter what, he says, he is happy knowing that he may have helped shape the pop consciousness of artists such as D'Angelo, Prince and Lenny Kravitz. "Every once in a while I'll hear the influence. Something will come on the radio and I'll go, `I wonder if they heard Inspiration Information?' And it makes me happy, because it was a dream that I wanted to get out. I think it was worth the long hours that I put on it. "I was trying to get it to a point of perfection. And you know what, some of it has a kind of high school sound to it, but I can listen to it today, and it holds up pretty good." Philadelphia Inquirer – Feature – March 25, 2001 COLLECTORS AWAIT MORE BURIED TREASURE FROM THE REMARKABLE '70S By Tom Moon INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC The early '70s loom as a time of unparalleled creativity in soul and rhythm and blues, a period of monstrous innovation and refinement when artists who had formerly been concerned with singles poured their energy into bold album-length statements. Consider just some of the music made between 1971 and 1974. Sly and the Family Stone, whose 1970 Greatest Hits was still lingering on the charts, dropped the relentlessly funky There's a Riot Goin' On in '71, the same year as Marvin Gaye's socially aware lament What's Going On and Funkadelic's freaky Maggot Brain. The next year brought Stevie Wonder's Talking Book and Curtis Mayfield's Superfly, albums that heralded a new era of songwriting and production sophistication. Tower of Power's Bump City suggested fresh approaches to brass-section scoring, while the O'Jays' Back Stabbers was one of many Philly soul triumphs characterized by symphonic strings and plush textures. Meanwhile, in Jamaica, Bob Marley and the Wailers released an album called Catch a Fire that appeared in this country in 1973 and launched reggae as a worldwide movement. Other 1973 titles: Wonder's Innervisions, Toots and the Maytals' Funky Kingston, Gaye's Let's Get It On, Funkadelic's Cosmic Slop, and Stone's Fresh. The next year, Parliament roared with Up for the Down Stroke, Earth, Wind & Fire hit its stride with Open Our Eyes, and the Ohio Players did Skin Tight. Is it any wonder that Shuggie Otis' Inspiration Information, which was perhaps a bit more esoteric, got lost in this embarrassment of riches? Though the early '70s explosion has been thoroughly documented and endlessly reissued, every now and then something "new" drops in and invites students of the period to marvel all over again at the era's experimental zeitgeist. One work collectors await hopefully is the adventurous album that Wonder is said to have made, and shelved, just after Talking Book. The R&B auteur known for his prodigious studio output has thus far been reluctant to share anything from his private archives. The 1997 reissue of Superfly - which includes an entire disc of expansive, previously unreleased work, most of it instrumental - suggests that Mayfield was exploring a meld of sleek Philly soul and the more adventurous jazz-rock fusion that Miles Davis, Weather Report and others were developing at the time. Another glimpse of an artist in creative overdrive can be found in the extremely rare Stone Flower singles. During the time he was signed to Epic, Sly Stone inked a deal with Atlantic to issue individual tracks featuring members of his band. Pressed in small quantities, the singles were credited to Little Sister (Rose Stone), Joe Hicks, the band 6IX Dynamite and others, but are unmistakably Sly: Some feature his trademark clavinet and scratching rhythm guitar; others are built around primitive drum-machine patterns. There is little information on the Stone Flower material - the masters were lost in a fire at Atlantic's storage facility, making it unlikely they will ever reach CD - but Stone students believe they were recorded between 1972 and '74. Many of the songs occupy both sides of 45 r.p.m. singles: Little Sister's "I'm the One, You're the One" offers the same slapping groove, with different lyrics, on "Part 1" and "Part 2." Although plenty loose, the tracks are hardly secondhand Stone. "Stanga" and "I'm the One" have the harrowing intensity of Sly's Riot compositions, while "Love and Death in G and A," featuring Hicks, is one of those smoldering rhythm-guitar workouts that could stretch 20 minutes in live performance. Filled with Stone's utopian aphorisms and wry musical signatures, they're revelatory additions to the funk hippie's legacy. And, like every surprise from the vaults, they raise more questions than they answer, the most tantalizing being "What else is gathering dust in there?" Barnes&Noble.com – Album Review – March 27, 2001 Hailed as the most important reissue of 2001, the lost album by Shuggie Otis -- teenage guitar virtuoso and son of West Coast chitlin' circuit czar Johnny Otis -- lives up to the hype. Inspiration Information is nothing short of a '70s psychedelic pop Rosetta Stone, imprinted with all of the ingredients that, three decades later, would become totems of the alternative soul and down-tempo electronica movements. Recorded in the same heady era as Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, Bob Marley's Burnin', and Sly Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On (all of which could make up the secret-history soundtrack to your average music hipster's first birthday party), Inspiration Information best makes the transition from dusty vinyl to au courant club music. It's as lush as Gaye (minus the dated Vietnam trappings), as funky as Sly (subtract the anachronistic militant vibe), and as stanky as Marley, hanging like a haze of indo smoke without the Rasta obscurantism. No wonder neo-soul and hip-hop lights from the Roots to D'Angelo to OutKast have pledged allegiance to Otis's gem. The icing on the cake is the delectable rarity of the disc; it circulated as a favorite of English soul DJs before being picked up by David Byrne's eclectic Luaka Bop bunch. Otis, who was tapped as a possible replacement for Stones guitarist Mick Taylor (he declined), saw his star ascendant in the early '70s, performing with Frank Zappa, Al Kooper, and his father's bands at the tender age of 15. But studio perfectionism and a smorgasbord of drugs delayed the completion of Inspiration Information, and the album, along with Otis's career, slipped into oblivion. Emerging more than 25 years later are some of the earliest experiments with electronic rhythm (on "XL-30" and "Pling"), a genre-bounding sensibility that straddles rock, soul, and funk with a facility nearly impossible today, and one bona fide hit, "Strawberry Letter 23," a platinum single for the Brothers Johnson in 1977 (and sampled on OutKast's masterful Stankonia). A perfect rainy-day suite of intimate soul (notably the classic "Aht Uh Mi Head") punctuated by bursts of soaring psychedelia (on the fiery "Ice Cold Daydream"), Inspiration could easily be an Afro counterpart to Air, or even Beck's next incarnation. Obviously, the world has been waiting for Shuggie Otis -- even if we never knew it. Mark Schwartz Amazon.com – Album Review – March 27, 2001 Editorial Reviews Like Stevie Wonder and Allen Toussaint before him--and Prince and D'Angelo afterward--Shuggie Otis was a musical visionary whose early 1970s recordings showed he could do it all, writing, arranging, performing, and producing some of the decade's most satisfying, innovative, and, unfortunately, overlooked music. This reissue of his 1974 Inspiration Information album--a soulful song cycle that took three years to create and was worth every minute--ranges from early drum machine-driven experiments like "Xl-30" and "Aht Uh Mi Hed" (note the Sly Stone spelling influence) to Otis's most stunning pop confection ever, "Strawberry Letter 23." (The latter song, which ended up being a big hit for the Brothers Johnson, is one of four bonus tracks taken from Otis's 1971 Freedom Flight album). Otis, who once turned down an offer to replace Mick Taylor in the Rolling Stones, continues to perform around the Bay Area on his own and with his father, bandleader Johnny Otis. Hopefully, the long-awaited resurrection of this material will help bring him the attention he deserves --Bill Forman Other Music – Album Review – March 27, 2001 In the endless search for soulful, spirited funk, one invariably happens upon the name Shuggie Otis. Otis, son of Johnny Otis and a guitar prodigy, made one of music's most magical meditations in "Inspiration Information," which is now fortuitously available 26 years later, on CD. Although Otis was a masterful arranger and meticulous producer, "Inspiration" sounds as if it flowed effortlessly from his mind, retaining the zest and kinetic efficacy of thought. One example is 'Aht Uh Mi Hed,' a lyrical study of memory and intimacy that subtly soars on orchestral wings, incorporating harps, triangles, seagulls and, most wonderfully, Shuggie's spur-of-the-moment shushes and whistles. The instrumental tracks, almost half the record, bloom from his imagination just as sprightly. 'XL-30' sounds like a dream DJ Premiere once had, strutting from Otis' "Uncle Funk" drum machine, met with fanciful whorls of Wurlitzer. The final track, 'Freedom Flight,' is a 12-minute jam so crystalline that Alice Coltrane would weep. Luaka Bop did the smart thing in including 'Strawberry Letter 23' here, in my opinion one of the best songs ever put on paper (from Otis' "Freedom Flight" three years earlier--and worth the price of the CD for this track alone). It is a conceptual, oddly-structured masterpiece of psychedelia, complete with kaleidoscopic lyrics, chiming xylophones, sleigh bells and a spiraling, vivacious coda. Its opening chimes always make me smile. "Inspiration Information" is a collection worth all the praise it has received and undoubtedly will receive once again. It is a powerful, untouchable compendium; a technicolor blast of California soul. [DD] DustyGroove.com – Album Review – March 27, 2001 Shuggie Otis -- Inspiration Information An insanely wonderful album! Shuggie Otis is the son of Johnny Otis -- the LA R&B maestro who was moving heavily into funk at the end of the 60s -- and he has this tripped out, super-dope guitar style that he played to strong effect on Johnny's albums of the late 60s and early 70s, and on his first two solo albums, which were kind of bluesy in tone. For this album, though, he shocked the world by moving into a stripped-down mode that pairs his guitar with spare drum machine rhythms, flanged-out deeply soulful vocals, and one of the most laidback conceptions of funk you'll ever hear. The album's a landmark -- one of those gems that's unlike anything else you can think of, but which will redefine your concept of what you want in a record for years to come. Every track's a winner -- and the whole thing's a perfectly unified batch of tunes that includes instant classics like "Inspiration Information", "Island Letter", "Aht Uh Mi Hed", "XL 30", and "Rainy Day". Plus, this reissue features 4 tracks from Shuggie's Freedom Flight LP -- including his original version of "Strawberry Letter 23", and "Sweet Thang", "Freedom Flight", and "Ice Cold Daydream". Louisville Courier-Journal – Album Review – March 31, 2001 Inspiration Information Shuggie Otis (Luaka Bop) Soul inspiring By JEFFREY LEE PUCKETT Shuggie Otis' "Inspiration Information" came out in 1974 and promptly disappeared, its immense spirit virtually ignored in a year when "Kung Fu Fighting" and "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" were major hits. Long out of print, the album has retained just enough hipster cool to qualify as a cult favorite almost unknown to even dedicated soul fans. David Byrne, the prince of hipster cool, is trying to change that with the reissue of a remastered and expanded "Inspiration Information" on his Luaka Bop label. It is an amazing record, and one that comes at you from an almost dizzying variety of angles. Shuggie -- it's impossible to call him by any other name -- conjures the smooth Detroit grooves of Marvin Gaye, dirty soul from Al Green's South and the sweet funk of George Clinton's Midwest. Throw in elements of jazz that dance around the mix and you have -- well, you have something indefinable. It's pure Shuggie Otis, the sound of a phenomenally talented young man who grew up immersed in half a dozen musical genres and then combined it all with an elegant seamlessness. (For an update on Shuggie, see an interview on the facing page.) Shuggie is the son of Johnny Otis, a rhythm-and-blues pioneer. Johnny cut his teeth playing with the likes of Louis Jordan, and his early bands featured artists such as Jimmy Rushing and Bill Doggett. As leader of the traveling Johnny Otis Show, he discovered Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. That was Shuggie's world, and he had enough chops to become guitarist in his father's band while still a teen-ager. Shuggie made his debut as a solo artist at age 17 and began writing "Inspiration Information" at age 19. Epic Records released it when he was 21, but it sounds like the work of a far more mature artist. Shuggie, who plays nearly every instrument and sings in a heartbreaking tenor, made a classic 1970s soul album that also anticipates Prince, lays some groundwork for trippy hip-hoppers such as PM Dawn, and even has hints of DJ-driven techno. The reissue adds four songs, including Shuggie's original version of "Strawberry Letter 23" (a hit for the Brothers Johnson), but it's worthwhile to listen to the album as originally intended: Its first half is vocal, the second instrumental. The vocal tracks are aural seduction, moving from the gliding funk of the title track to the sexy slither of "Aht Uh Mi Hed" (Shuggie even had the alternate spellings down before Prince). There's a pleading quality to Shuggie's voice as he searches for spiritual and/or emotional peace; you can interpret it either way. The instrumentals are less consistent, but there's a dreamlike quality to some that is perfect for either a Saturday-night date or Sunday-morning afterglow. Shuggie never made another record after "Inspiration Information," which was his fourth in four years, but if there's any justice the album that time forgot will also be his vehicle for a comeback. Fans of the true groove won't find much better.