I don't want to recount his entire life story, so here's the Wikipedia link on him if you want to learn more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis_Blackwell
I've only made one album's worth of songs from him because although he wrote many songs over the years, in my opinion only a relatively small number were special. But boy were they special! It's estimated that over 150 million records sold have his name in the songwriting credits.
Blackwell tried being a professional singer before turning all of his attention to songwriting. The first song here is sung (and written) by him. He put out a bunch of singles from 1953 to 1958, but he had very little success despite being a good singer. In fact, he recorded demos for the songs Elvis Presley turned into hits. On a rare later song from 1970, "It's All Over Me," you can see he sounds very Elvis-esque.
As with the case with many other songwriting who found success in the 1950s, that success came to a drastic half around 1964, when the Beatles and Bob Dylan drastically changed the music industry. It seems he had almost no new songs after about that time, though I've included one, "Back Trail," that was first recorded by him in 1977.
As a general rule for this Covered series, I don't like to include two versions of the same song. But I couldn't resist in this case. I put a version of "Breathless" by X at the very end of the album even though I included the original version by Jerry Lee Lewis, because I love the X version so very much.
Blackwell died in 2002 after a long life. I hope putting this album together and presenting it here will help him get a tiny bit more recognition, which he very much deserves.
01 Let the Daddy Hold You (Otis Blackwell)
02 Don't Be Cruel (Elvis Presley)
03 Paralyzed (Elvis Presley)
04 Great Balls of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis)
05 All Shook Up (Elvis Presley)
06 Fever (Peggy Lee)
07 Breathless (Jerry Lee Lewis)
08 Hey Little Girl (Dee Clark)
09 Please Mister Mayor (Roy Clark)
10 Let's Talk about Us (Jerry Lee Lewis)
11 Brace Yourself (Ben E. King)
12 Handy Man (Jimmy Jones)
13 Livin' Lovin' Wreck (Jerry Lee Lewis)
14 Return to Sender (Elvis Presley)
15 Home in Your Heart (Solomon Burke)
16 Daddy Rolling Stone (Who)
17 It's All Over Me (Otis Blackwell)
18 Back Trail (Lonnie Brooks)
19 Breathless (X)
https://www.upload.ee/files/15259918/CoveredOtisBlackwll_atse.zip.html
This is the third songwriter or songwriter team I've deal with so far in this series. As with the other two, I've had a heck of a time finding any color photos, unless they're from much later in life. But I'm really happy with this pic used for the cover art, because it shows Blackwell sitting at the piano in the process of writing a song.
Note that, months later, I figured out how to colorize the pic, and did so.
Comments
Post a Comment