Everything had be looking bright for Shuggie Otis back in 1974. He was about to release his third solo album, BB King called him his favourite young guitarist and one of the world’s biggest bands sent him an invite to join them.
He was about to turn 21 and his career was only just getting started. It’d be all but over by year’s end.
A little backstory: Otis was born into a musical family. His father was bandleader, drummer and R&B legend Johnny Otis. It’s said Shuggie was playing guitar when he was 2 and playing live with his dad in nightclubs before he was teenager. By the time he turned old enough to drive, he was working as a session musician, appearing on albums by Frank Zappa, Al Kooper, and Etta James. He found time to even release a solo album, Here Comes Shuggie Otis.
His second album, Freedom Flight, was released in 1971. Here things really got started. The title track was a long slow-burning funk jam that let him stretch his guitar playing out. There’s the dusty, bluesy “Sweet Thang” and the Sly Stone-ish funk of “Ice Cold Daydream.” But the big moment is “Strawberry Letter 23,” a psychedelic funk with splashes of percussion, hazy organ, and a tasty guitar solo. As a single, it cracked the lower reaches of the charts, propelling the album along with it.
On Freedom Flight, a killer session band backed Otis: George Duke on keyboards, Aynsley Dunbar on drums, Wilton Felder on bass, and even his father showed up now and then. But on his next album, Otis did just about everything himself.
To be fair, Otis was already known for his skills on several instruments. Hell, he played a little of everything on Freedom Flight. But for his third album Inspiration Information, Otis was truly making a solo album. Months in the studio turned into years. In the liner notes to the 2001 reissue of the album, James Sullivan wrote that nobody really knew what was going on in the studio, not even his record label or his father.
He took his time, but the resulting album was stunning, effortlessly mixing funk, soul, rock, and styles of music that didn’t even exist at the time. At times it sounds like the missing link between Prince and Lenny Kravitz, except Inspiration Information came out well before either was making records. At others Inspiration Information turns into lush strings, slow-burning jazz jams, and even ambient techno. To me, the two original sides of the album feels like two suites of music, one his take on funk of the early 70s and the other an experimental take showing what funk could be.
It opens with the swaggering funk of the title track. It’s a fun number with a nice guitar solo, but it’s not genre-busting or anything. The next song, “Island Letter,” is when Otis starts throwing twists into his music. It starts with a ticking rhythm machine, a strummed guitar and a softly restrained bass line. After a bit, Otis starts softly singing “Oh, how I miss you,” drawing out each word. As the tempo picks up, strings swell in the background and he starts thumping his bass. Right as the strings hit a climax, everything drops out like he swept it away in one big gesture, leaving just Otis and his guitar, before he closes out the song with an electric piano solo. We’re just getting started, folks.
The first side of Inspiration Information generally sticks to funk. “Sparkle City” has a horn-driven intro, and Otis singing, “I heard all the news, there is no offer that I wouldn’t refuse.” And Aht Uh Mi Hed” has a palpable Sly Stone feeling (and not just in the title): the ticking box, guitar and organ are right out of Sly’s “There’s A Riot Goin’ On.” But it takes a turn too, bursting into strings, flutes, and eagle cries. There’s a fun time haappening? Oh, no doubt.
Side two takes things a little further from the funk confines. “Happy House” pushes the organ to the front of the mix and has stop-and-go rhythm, while “Rainy Day” slows everything down for a slow guitar jam. If Otis hadn’t recorded it all himself, you’d think it rose out of a studio jam. But every piece fits: the jazzy guitar lines with the strings and horns, the bass neatly filling the empty spaces without ever distracting from anything else. It’s almost a pointillist musical painting, if that makes sense.
The chugging rhythm box is back for “Pling!,” the slowest and most atmospheric track on the record. The understated keyboards and light touches of horns remind me a lot of the second side of Brian Eno’s Another Green World – an album that came out the following year!
Otis brings it all back home with “Not Available:” the jangling lead guitar, the starts and stops so abrupt you’d think the record skipped, the sudden bursts of horn and string sections. And to my ears, the most interesting thing is how Otis hasn’t sang a note since “Happy House.” He’s letting his music speak for him. I’m more than happy to listen.
Inspiration Information didn’t quite revolutionize funk or even the charts, topping out at 181. Opinion was divided: Robert Christgau opened his review by saying “what a waste.” He turned down an offer from The Rolling Stones and went back to work on a new album. Not long after, Epic Records dropped him from their label. Otis had all but vanished at the age of 22.
He popped up now and then. United Mutations lists him on a Billy Preston album in the late 70s and backing up Bob Dylan in the 80s. A Village Voice profile from last year suggests he spent time working day jobs when music work dried up.
His music did the same: In 1977, The Brothers Johnson’s cover of “Strawberry Letter 23” peaked at #5 on the charts. Even today, their cover is the most famous version of the song, even if it’s just a little different from the original. In the early 90s, Otis was getting a second life in hip-hop. One example: Digable Planets sampled Island Letter on their seminal Blowout Comb LP. So did J Dilla, Madlib and even Beyonce!
Interest slowly built up in Otis and he started to seem like a mysterious combination of Prince and Sly Stone with a little Howard Hughes thrown in for taste: a talented, reclusive guitar legend who vanished after releasing his best record. The reality was a little simpler: after taking too long and not moving enough product, his label dropped him and no others thought to sign him. He still gigged around, although mostly in California.
In 2001, Luaka Bop reissued his masterpiece LP Inspiration Information and late last year, Sony re-released it themselves, paired with an album of new music from Otis, who as it turns out has been recording and writing music since Inspiration Information‘s release. Either CD is worth checking out: the older has some cuts from his second LP, the newer has a whole CD of new music. Both are great listens. And Inspiration Information is great: after nearly four decades, it’s still as fresh, funky, and fun as ever.