Shuggie Otis, World Psychedelic Classics 2 Inspiration Information
The Rolling Stones wanted this guitar god to replace Mick Taylor. Need we say more?
A prodigiously gifted multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and arranger á la Stevie Wonder, Prince or D'Angelo, Shuggie Otis scarcely blipped on radar until David Byrne's Luaka Bop label re-released his 1974 masterpiece Inspiration Information in 2001, augmenting it with four ace tracks from the Los Angeles-born talent's 1971 album Freedom Flight. Byrne was much taken with an artist whose effortless-sounding funk, soul and jazz grooves tip the hat to Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye and Miles Davis. Interest in the reissue culminated with Shuggie performing on the David Letterman show, but since then he has again sunk without trace.
Pictorially speaking, Inspiration Information could be represented by a shot of a lizard idling in the sun. “Island Letter” conjures Robinson Crusoe, three piña coladas into a horizon-gazing reverie and elsewhere, whether trading in taste-personified funk guitar or singing in the shyly soulful manner of a young Jimi Hendrix, Otis sounds as though he's just had the stress-busting massage of his life. This is not easy listening music, though, but rather sussed and sophisticated songwriting that's supremely easy to get lost in.
Like Sly Stone, with whom he rubbed shoulders while working on this album at Columbia Studios, Otis made pioneering use of the Maestro Rhythm King drum machine. That's what you hear pulsing through the fabulously outré instrumental “XL-30″ (imagine Joe Meek with the Funk), and lending gentle, Latin-flavoured momentum to the shimmering electric piano chords on “Ping!”
It's two of the bonus tracks from Freedom Flight, though, which, when taken as a pair, best illustrate the breadth of Shuggie's appeal. “Freedom Flight” itself is a 13-minute, guitar-led instrumental pitching camp somewhere between Fleetwood Mac's “Albatross” and Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, while “Strawberry Letter 23," reportedly taking its name from the scented paper on which Otis's then girlfriend conveyed her love, is psychedelic pop of the finest stripe.
But best of all is, perhaps, is the original album's fairly self-explanatory “Aht Uh Mi Hed.” Its divine middle section illustrates that Otis could be as masterful with a sonic palette as Van Gogh was with oil on canvas, harp, glockenspiel, pizzicato strings and a brief flutter of acid-jazz flute springing sweet surprises. No wonder British pop soul singer Corinne Bailey Rae described the song as one of her all-time favourites when talking to The Guardian in 2006.
