SHUGGIE OTIS (born Johnny Alexander Veliotes, Jr.; November 30, 1953) is an American singer-songwriter, recording artist, and multi-instrumentalist.
Otis' composition "Strawberry Letter 23" (as recorded by The Brothers Johnson) topped the Billboard R&B chart and reached #5 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1977. He also achieved commercial success with his 1974 single "Inspiration Information" (from the album of the same name), reaching #56 on the R&B chart.
Biography:
Born in Los Angeles, California, Otis is the son of rhythm and blues pioneer, musician, bandleader, and impresario Johnny Otis and wife Phyllis. The name "Shuggie" (short for "sugar", according to his mother) was coined by Phyllis when he was a newborn. Otis began playing guitar when he was two years old and performing professionally with his father's band at the age of twelve, often disguising himself with dark glasses and a false mustache so that he could play with his father's band in after-hours nightclubs.
Otis, primarily known as a guitarist, also sings and plays a multitude of other instruments. While growing up with and being heavily influenced by many blues, jazz and R&B musicians in his father Johnny's immediate circle, Otis began to gravitate towards the popular music of his generation such as Sly Stone, Jimi Hendrix, and Arthur Lee of the band Love. In 1969, Al Kooper asked Otis to be the featured guest on the second installment of the Super Session album series that had previously included Stephen Stills and Mike Bloomfield. Kooper and the then-fifteen-year-old Otis recorded the whole album over one weekend in New York. Immediately returning to Los Angeles, Otis, along with his father and singer Delmar "Mighty Mouth" Evans, performed on the album Cold Shot, released in 1969 on the Los Angeles-based Kent label. Another obscure album this three-man team recorded was the extremely rare and risque Snatch & The Poontangs, on which Otis recorded tracks under the pseudonym "Prince Wunnerful".
Otis then released his first solo album later that year entitled Here Comes Shuggie Otis on Epic Records. Countless musicians were his guests on that debut attempt, including Johnny, Leon Haywood, Al McKibbon, Wilton Felder. This further established his reputation and catapulted him to the attention of B. B. King, who was quoted in a 1970 issue of Guitar Player magazine saying Otis was "his favorite new guitarist". Some of the artists Otis performed and recorded with during that time include Frank Zappa (having played electric bass on "Peaches en Regalia" on the 1969 album Hot Rats), Etta James, Eddie Vinson, Richard Berry, Louis Jordan, and Bobby 'Blue' Bland, among many others.
The album Otis received the most notoriety for was his second Epic Records release in 1971, Freedom Flight, which featured his hit "Strawberry Letter 23". Both the album and single reached the Billboard Top 200 and caught the attention of Brothers Johnson guitarist George Johnson, who then played it for producer Quincy Jones. They covered the song and it instantly became a smash hit. Even though Otis played most of his own parts in the studio, the lineup on this album was quite extensive, including keyboardist George Duke and Aynsley Dunbar of Frank Zappa, Journey, and Whitesnake fame.
In 1974, Otis released Inspiration Information, his third and final album for Epic Records. The album had taken almost three years to finish. All the songs were written and arranged by Otis himself, who played almost exclusively every musical instrument on the album (except for horns and various stringed instruments). However, despite its long-awaited impact, Inspiration Information had but one single (the title track) reach the Billboard Top 200. After the album's release, Otis was approached by Billy Preston on behalf of The Rolling Stones, asking him to join the band for their upcoming world tour. He declined the offer, along with the chance to work with Quincy Jones in helping produce Otis's next album. After a series of similar refusals, Otis gained the reputation of "taking his time", and his recording contract with Epic Records was nullified. Otis's only credited works throughout the mid-1970s were done as a session musician for his father's recording projects.
Inspiration Information gained a huge cult following during the 1990s with the emergence of rare groove and acid jazz.[citation needed] It was lauded by such musicians as Prince and Lenny Kravitz. Due in part to this regained interest, the album was re-released on April 3, 2001, by David Byrne's independent label Luaka Bop Records. This CD re-issue includes all nine original album tracks plus four songs taken from Otis' 1971 album Freedom Flight, and features new cover art, liner notes, and exclusive never-seen-before photos.
Otis is featured in every one of his father Johnny's books, as well as Alligator Records Presents West Coast Blues, issued in August 1998.
Otis and Sony Music Entertainment have made a deal for a double CD which will be released on April 20, 2013. It will be a re-release of Inspiration/Information. Added to the album will be several bonus tracks, including an accompanying album entitled Wings of Love. Wings of Love is an album of previously unreleased material, all of which was written from 1975 to the present, including live material from some of his rare performances. It will be available on Shugiterius records (Shuggie's new company) and Sony records, through Sony Music Entertainment.
Personal life:
Little is known of Otis' private affairs, as he is considered by most who know him to have always been somewhat reclusive. While still a teenager, he had a son with Judith Peters, Johnny III (who goes by Lucky). A few years later, he then married Lillian Wilson, daughter of trumpeter, bandleader, and Latin jazz pioneer Gerald Wilson, and they (Shuggie and Lillian, a/k/a Teri) had a son, Eric (whom Lillian named after her father Gerald's close friend and bandmate Eric Dolphy). In spring 1991, Otis Sr. and his family relocated to Sonoma County. Since moving back to Southern California in 2006, Otis has made but a handful of sporadic public appearances.
Both of Shuggie's sons, Lucky Otis and Eric Otis, who are also musicians and based in the Los Angeles area, are producing their own music as well,
Shuggie has a new band now (2012) and is currently on a: "Never Ending World Wide Tour". It will start in Europe of November 2012.
From Wikipedia
Shuggie Otis – "Inspiration Information/Wings Of Love" - Deluxe 2CD set coming 15th April
For more than four decades, Shuggie Otis has earned respect as a musician’s musician. He is the link between Sly Stone and Prince. An incredibly gifted musician and composer best known for the sweet soul classic ‘Strawberry Letter 23,’ (a worldwide hit for the Brothers Johnson in 1977), Otis has won praise as a guitarist on projects with artists as diverse as his father, Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame R&B pioneer Johnny Otis (1921-2012), Al Kooper, Etta James, Charles Brown, Frank Zappa, Chico Hamilton, Don “Sugarcane” Harris, Mos Def, and many others.
Shuggie Otis (b. 1953) spent virtually his entire young life playing in and around the various Johnny Otis bands which introduced such R&B legends through its lineups (since the late-’40s) as Big Jay McNeely, Wynonie Harris, Charles Brown, and Little Esther Phillips, to name a few. Shuggie was finally “discovered” by Al Kooper during his stint as a Columbia Records A&R staff producer starting in the late-’60s. Kooper’s second ‘Super Session’ LP, Kooper Session: Al Kooper with Shuggie Otis (released early 1970) essentially introduced Shuggie, the guitarist on all seven tracks, who was a 15-year old wunderkind when he recorded the album.
He was a year older when he recorded Here Comes Shuggie Otis (released late 1970) for Epic, his first official LP under his own name, produced by Johnny Otis and featuring the cream of L.A. jazz session players. Freedom Flight (Epic, 1971), again produced by Johnny Otis, was Shuggie’s second solo LP in two years, and is the original source for“Strawberry Letter 23.” Shuggie was just 21 years old when his third and final album, Inspiration Information, was issued on Epic at the end of 1974.
Shuggie Otis (b. 1953) spent virtually his entire young life playing in and around the various Johnny Otis bands which introduced such R&B legends through its lineups (since the late-’40s) as Big Jay McNeely, Wynonie Harris, Charles Brown, and Little Esther Phillips, to name a few. Shuggie was finally “discovered” by Al Kooper during his stint as a Columbia Records A&R staff producer starting in the late-’60s. Kooper’s second ‘Super Session’ LP, Kooper Session: Al Kooper with Shuggie Otis (released early 1970) essentially introduced Shuggie, the guitarist on all seven tracks, who was a 15-year old wunderkind when he recorded the album.
He was a year older when he recorded Here Comes Shuggie Otis (released late 1970) for Epic, his first official LP under his own name, produced by Johnny Otis and featuring the cream of L.A. jazz session players. Freedom Flight (Epic, 1971), again produced by Johnny Otis, was Shuggie’s second solo LP in two years, and is the original source for“Strawberry Letter 23.” Shuggie was just 21 years old when his third and final album, Inspiration Information, was issued on Epic at the end of 1974.
In his liner notes for INSPIRATION INFORMATION/WINGS OF LOVE, journalist Chris Campion ranks the original LP alongside such late-’60s / early-’70s breakthroughs by black artists as Love’s Forever Changes, the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Axis Bold As Love, Sly & the Family Stone’s There's A Riot Going On, and Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions.
Widely regarded as an absolute masterpiece and an enormous influence on Prince, Flying Lotus, J Dilla, David Byrne, D’Angelo, De La Soul, Pharrell Williams and Cody Chesnutt to name a mere few, it’s production qualities alone have seen songs from Inspiration Information sampled on numerous US R&B hits including OutKast’s ‘Ms. Jackson,’Beyoncé’s ‘Gift From Virgo,’ Digable Planets’ ‘For Corners,’ and the list goes on.
After the release of Inspiration Information, as far as the public knew, Shuggie simply disappeared from view. But he “never stopped making music… There were little lapses here and there, little breaks from time to time, but I never stopped playing, writing, recording. I was still going around to record companies, still pitching my tapes.” Those tapes, most of them recorded at his home studio, are the substance of the “new album” – or “lost album,” depending on your perspective – now known as WINGS OF LOVE.
After the release of Inspiration Information, as far as the public knew, Shuggie simply disappeared from view. But he “never stopped making music… There were little lapses here and there, little breaks from time to time, but I never stopped playing, writing, recording. I was still going around to record companies, still pitching my tapes.” Those tapes, most of them recorded at his home studio, are the substance of the “new album” – or “lost album,” depending on your perspective – now known as WINGS OF LOVE.
INSPIRATION INFORMATION/ WINGS OF LOVE, a brilliant restoration personally supervised by Shuggie, arrives as a double-CD set on April 15, 2013, through Epic/Legacy, a division of SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT.
In this new package, the first CD will comprise the original nine-song Inspiration Information album, with the addition of four previously unreleased bonus tracks recorded in 1971. The tracks were done at Columbia Studios and at Hawk Sound, the 16-track studio built in the backyard of the Otis family homestead in the West Athens neighborhood of Los Angeles. The second CD, entitled WINGS OF LOVE, is a new album of 14 previously unreleased live and studio tracks recorded by Shuggie between 1975 and 2000. This is the first new music that the world has heard from Shuggie since 1974.
In this new package, the first CD will comprise the original nine-song Inspiration Information album, with the addition of four previously unreleased bonus tracks recorded in 1971. The tracks were done at Columbia Studios and at Hawk Sound, the 16-track studio built in the backyard of the Otis family homestead in the West Athens neighborhood of Los Angeles. The second CD, entitled WINGS OF LOVE, is a new album of 14 previously unreleased live and studio tracks recorded by Shuggie between 1975 and 2000. This is the first new music that the world has heard from Shuggie since 1974.
“Like pop as Michael Jackson made it, as Prince made it, but more,”Campion offers, while also suggesting, “That you can hear traces of both those artists in their prime on WINGS OF LOVE is no mere accident. Such has been Shuggie's influence, you can bet they were not only aware of Shuggie Otis, they studied him.” Several tracks are singled out, among them ‘Tryin’ To Get Close To You’ (which utilizes the Rhythm King, an early beatbox-metronome that became a signature of Shuggie's sound and which he still employs today) ‘Doin’ What’s Right’ (one of several songs that “name-check” INSPIRATION INFORMATION) ‘Black Belt Sheriff’ (“Shuggie Otis, simple and plain, stripped and bare, singing and playing, without either a studio or a band to back him up”) and of course the epic 11 and a half-minute title track, ‘Wings Of Love’(“building on a melody, brilliant in its minimalism, that circles, builds, takes off, soars and flies, buoyed by dazzling guitar arpeggios that sound like Paganini ripping on electric guitar”).
An overriding theme is “the romantic, lovelorn teenager, who has now grown up and matured, lived and learned, sometimes hard lessons, but never in vain. He's no longer just dreaming of an idealized love, but has found it, tasted it for real and now has to work out how to get it and/or keep it.” This is the driving force behind ‘Give Me A Chance,’ ‘Don't Run Away,’ ‘Tryin’ To Get Close To You’ and ‘Special’. ‘Fawn’ is simply astounding.
WINGS OF LOVE, says Campion, is “a time capsule of music from another age – to be precise, several ages – buried, but not forgotten, waiting for the date it can be cracked opened, pored over and appreciated. And that time is now.”
An overriding theme is “the romantic, lovelorn teenager, who has now grown up and matured, lived and learned, sometimes hard lessons, but never in vain. He's no longer just dreaming of an idealized love, but has found it, tasted it for real and now has to work out how to get it and/or keep it.” This is the driving force behind ‘Give Me A Chance,’ ‘Don't Run Away,’ ‘Tryin’ To Get Close To You’ and ‘Special’. ‘Fawn’ is simply astounding.
WINGS OF LOVE, says Campion, is “a time capsule of music from another age – to be precise, several ages – buried, but not forgotten, waiting for the date it can be cracked opened, pored over and appreciated. And that time is now.”
The release of INSPIRATION INFORMATION/WINGS OF LOVE caps an amazing new phase of Shuggie’s career, as he emerged from his quiet (but productive) seclusion in Los Angeles to complete this package and return to the stage. “The Shuggie Otis Rite Tour” commenced in November 2012, with a European trip that included shows in London, Paris, Antwerp, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Dublin.
Shuggie then made a rare appearance at the intimate subterranean Echoplex venue in L.A.’s Echo Park area. (The last time Shuggie played a local show was a one-off date with Mos Def in 2004, in conjunction with Mos Def’s album, The New Danger, on which Shuggie played guitar on ‘Blue Black Jack’).
Shuggie then made a rare appearance at the intimate subterranean Echoplex venue in L.A.’s Echo Park area. (The last time Shuggie played a local show was a one-off date with Mos Def in 2004, in conjunction with Mos Def’s album, The New Danger, on which Shuggie played guitar on ‘Blue Black Jack’).
“The Shuggie Otis Rite Tour” carries on through 2013, beginning in Mexico, through Australia and Japan, then the US before Shuggie returns to the UK for 3 shows in May.
Here's a look at the tracklisting:
CD One: INSPIRATION INFORMATION
Selections: 1. Inspiration Information • 2. Island Letter • 3. Sparkle City • 4. Aht Uh Mi Hed • 5. Happy House • 6. Rainy Day • 7. XL-30 • 8. Pling! • 9. Not Available • Bonus tracks (previously unreleased): 10. Miss Pretty • 11. Magic • 12. Things We Like To Do • 13. Castle Top Jam.
CD Two: WINGS OF LOVE
Selections: 1. Intro • 2. Special • 3. Give Me Something Good • 4. Tryin' To Get Close To You • 5. Walkin' Down The Country • 6. Doin’ What’s Right • 7. Wings Of Love • 8. Give Me A Chance • 9. Don't You Run Away • 10. Fireball of Love • 11. Fawn • 12. If You'd Be Mine • 13. Black Belt Sheriff • 14. Destination You!
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