Otis Redding - The Singles 2xLP (From Otis Forever: The Albums and Singles 1968 - 1970 Box Set)

Rhino / ATCO (2023) 

My plan of reviewing every Otis Redding album in this box set over a series of consecutive Fridays and/or Mondays failed miserably. But at long last, we can get to the final, double LP of this set, The Singles. For me, this was absolutely the main even of this box set and is something I’ve been waiting for when it comes to Otis. A proper singles compilation.

To me, the comparison must be made to the Three CD set, The Complete Stax/Volt Singles Collection. This set captures every single that Otis Redding released, but there was never a vinyl equivalent. Is The Singles that equivalent now? Not exactly, but it gets us very close. I actually made an Excel spreadsheet and listed every song on the CD set. I then went through and noted when that song appeared on any of the records in the two Otis Redding vinyl box sets. My goal was to see if by having both box sets, do I have all of these songs on vinyl. Turns out, it’s pretty close.

There’s only three songs (excluding live versions) that only exist on the CD set: “Mary’s Little Lamb,” “Don’t Leave Me This Way” and “I’m Depending on You.” That’s not bad considering the CD set has seventy songs on it. Spreadsheet aside, The Mono Singles is an excellent collection of non-album Otis Redding tunes and includes some of my very favorite songs of his.

When you have an album that has hits on it like “Hard To Handle,” “The Happy Song” and “Can’t Turn You Loose,” that’s a pretty high bar. And those are just the highest of highs on an album crammed full of them. To me, this album is worth the purchase of the entire set and having nice shiny copies of all of his posthumous albums is a bonus. I still don’t understand why both box sets include The Dock of the Bay album as that’s just an extra, unneeded copy of you buy both sets, but being able to make two purchases and have pretty much the entire catalog of Otis Redding on vinyl is a truly wonderful thing.

Otis Redding - Tell The Truth LP (From Otis Forever: The Albums and Singles 1968 - 1970 Box Set)

Rhino / ATCO (2023) 

For the next few weeks, on Mondays, I'm writing about individual albums in the Otis Forever: The Albums and Singles 1968 - 1970 box set. This is the second Otis Redding box set I have, but this one focuses on his posthumous albums. Otis has been a long time favorite of mine, and the opportunity to finally pick up nice copies of the albums released after he passed was one I was not going to pass up.

Tell The Truth is an album that I'm really not familiar with at all.  It's never been in my collection in any format and while I know a couple of the songs, this is like a new Otis Redding releases for me.  By the time we get to Tell The Truth, the fourth posthumous Otis Redding album, it's starting to become clear that they were digging a little deeper into the the vaults at this point.

That's not to say that this is a bad or even a lackluster record, but it is missing some of that uniformity that made the others sound like full albums.  Tell The Truth just sounds like a collection of songs, without the same type of cohesion from track to track taking you through the record.  That's not to say there aren't some incredible songs on here.  Otis had an incredible knack for composition and that man was a hit machine.  Not sure it would even be possible for him to write a bad song.

While this might not be the classic Otis record that some of his others may be, it's still a damn good record and finally having a nice sounding, pristine copy on vinyl is all I could really ask for.  We'll close up this box set review next Monday, with the double LP main event that is probably the main selling point of the whole box for me.

Otis Redding - Tell The Truth:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=XN5eXZPsAeM&list=OLAK5uy_nG_wJwEHjrObCjeV7X88WQ3JK98evvSGQ

Otis Redding - Love Man LP (From Otis Forever: The Albums and Singles 1968 - 1970 Box Set)

Rhino / ATCO (2023)

For the next few weeks, on Mondays, I'm writing about individual albums in the Otis Forever: The Albums and Singles 1968 - 1970 box set. This is the second Otis Redding box set I have, but this one focuses on his posthumous albums.  Otis has been a long time favorite of mine, and the opportunity to finally pick up nice copies of the albums released after he passed was one I was not going to pass up.

The third of Otis Redding's posthumous albums is Love Man.  You would think that after mining two LPs worth of unreleased material already, the vaults might start to run dry.  Especially considering that Otis' career was tragically brief.  But somehow, this album is still a revelation.

Maybe it's not quite as strong as the prior two, and maybe there isn't an epic, classic, signature song like "Dock of the Bay" (Though "Love Man" really isn't too far off, in my opinion), but the quality and consistency of the songs Otis recorded at the end of his career are so impressive.  Equally impressive is that this isn't a collection of cover songs.  Of the twelve songs on the album, only three weren't written, at least in part, by Otis himself.

As an album, this and next week's Tell The Truth are the ones that I was least familiar with coming into this box set.  But the wave of familiarity washed over me as I listened to Love Man.  There is something so timeless and perfect about Otis Redding and there really isn't ever a time where his music doesn't put a smile on my face.

Otis Redding - Love Man:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=hdFjGVBtx0w&list=OLAK5uy_m-4BurZK-qVjlAp5NuErHhByb5CFkPous