“On this day the vitality of the blues was triumphantly reaffirmed.”  - Leonard Feather

The Johnny Otis Show Live at Monterey subtitled: The Historic Rhythm and Blues Show That Rocked the 1970 Monterey Jazz Festival is a double live album which captures a quintessential California experience.  

The recording connects Oakland to San Francisco like the Bay Bridge. It connects Northern and Southern California like the Pacific Coast Highway. It also connects hippies to real hipsters. It connects blacks and whites. It connects Hollywood to Watts...bear with me, as I am, after all a Californian... like Sunset to the 101 south, to the 110 south, to the 91 east to Central Ave north.  

What Johnny Otis and this album represent is what California represents to America and the world. It is in many ways what America is supposed to be...hip, cool, progressive and traditional all at the same time. Not to mention racially inclusive and most of all, fun.

The festival took place on a bright, beautiful third Saturday in September. It was a glorious day for an outdoor concert which commenced at one in the afternoon when The Johnny Otis Show took the stage. It was the Saturday afternoon program which festival organizers set aside for blues music. It was also a predictably agreeable day for Hollywood to come calling. The Monterey Fair Grounds served as a “location shoot” for a young filmmaker who was directing his first movie.

In the intervening forty five years that filmmaker and San Francisco native, Clint Eastwood, would become an iconic American archetypical figure and an international celebrity. In 1970, Eastwood was primarily known by movie buffs for playing “the man with no name” in a “spaghetti western” trilogy. Since the filming was scheduled to take place at a time which would conflict with Eastwood’s beloved Monterey Jazz Festival, this relative Hollywood newcomer insisted that the entire film be shot in and around that part of the state.

Eastwood prevailed and, in what would become one of his trademarks, brought the film in under budget and ahead of schedule. The psychological suspense thriller Play Misty for Me has Eastwood playing the film’s protagonist who is a jazz disc jockey. The film’s title of course is a reference to the Errol Garner ballad, Misty. No spoiler alert here, but Eastwood managed to shoot a scene at the festival and included a brief performance clip of The Cannonball Adderly Quintet as well as The Johnny Otis Show.    

Johnny Otis had been a bankable commodity since the 1940’s. However, by 1970, the man who has been referred to as the “Father of Rhythm & Blues” may have been thought of as a relic, a museum piece and a symbol of a bygone era. The decade of the 60’s had been hard on a lot of great musicians. The focus of the industry was the lucrative teen market and music to which young people could relate. It is what is now referred to as classic–rock.

I think the great jazz critic and author Leonard Feather said it best when he wrote in the album’s liner notes, “Here was the consummate proof that where today’s music may set up communication gaps, the blues destroys them.”

The fact remains that Johnny Otis was not only one of the most interesting figures in American music, in my mind he is one of the most interesting characters to stride across the American stage...PERIOD. He is also a classic Californian, as his resume’ and his accomplishments could only have happened in his home state. 

On the surface, Johnny Otis would appear to be a bundle of contradictions. He was a white man who became the embodiment of black culture. He was a big band leader who is considered a pioneer of rock and roll. He was a cutting edge musical innovator who hosted his own “oldies” radio show. He was a blues man who was also a television star. He was a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who didn’t much care for that genre of music. He was an urban hip cat who was also a country farmer.

He was also an accomplished chef, author, painter, sculptor, talent scout and nightclub owner. He was a songwriter, arranger and producer. He was a drummer, pianist, vibraphonist and a singer. He was a politician and a preacher. Oh yeah....the cat even sold his own brand of organic apple juice.

In a career that had an abundance of highlights, this performance ranks up there with any of his numerous triumphs.

After opening with his crossover hit, Willie and the Hand Jive, Otis then introduced to the stage a procession of veteran musicians who still had their chops fully intact. One after another the roll call continued as each performer brought their unique take on the blues to the stage. They simply floored the audience. Little Esther Phillips, Eddie
“Cleanhead” Vinson, “Big” Joe Turner, “Ivory” Joe Hunter, Roy Milton, Gene Conners, Roy Brown, Margie Evans, Delmar “Mighty Mouth” Evans, Pee Wee Crayton and trombonist The Mighty Flea, all gave wonderful accounting of themselves as they were backed by a band with whom they all had worked at one time or another. Otis himself led the charge, often pounding away at the vibraphone, playing with an intensity not often associated with that instrument.  Clifford Solomon, from the fantastic horn section, handled all the tenor sax solos.  

The emerging star, who practically stole the show, was native Los Angelino, Shuggie Otis. It was his big breakout performance. The London based blues guitarist who grew up in Oakland, California, Otis Grand, wrote right here in the “pages” of BLUES JUNCTION some time back about this performance, “His mature, tasteful blues guitar backing and fills were sublime.”

The fact was the seventeen year old Shuggie Otis had  been playing guitar since he was a small child and by 1970 was already one of the baddest cats on the planet. Shuggie Otis’ performance that afternoon let those in attendance know that blues music didn’t have to go down the drain as a viable, albeit modest commercial entity. He demonstrated that this music could be very exciting and imbibed with youth. Shuggie’s playing showed that young and very talented performers could continue these decades old traditions in new and compelling ways without compromising the integrity of the music.

Otis Grand went on to say of this performance, “This is a polished yet forceful live recording. There has been hardly anything since that can match this set. Nothing has come close. This is all about the full sound of glorious music with all the musicians playing their parts exquisitely to achieve a complete spectrogram of updated 40’s and 50’s Americana.”

As it turned out, The Johnny Otis Show at the 1970 Monterey Jazz Festival was just a blip on the radar. It didn’t signal any huge surge in interest in that wonderful blend of blues, rhythm & blues and first generation rock & roll which was championed for so long by Johnny Otis. The concert was, for all intents and purposes, just a brief, shining moment where all that is so joyous about African-American music could be enjoyed by anyone with a soul.

As far as The Monterey Jazz Festival is concerned, it is still going off on the third weekend of September and, to a large degree, the fairgrounds look much the same as they did in 1970. In fact, the performances take place in the exact spot where it all began in 1958. Clint Eastwood has for years been, and remains, a member of the Festival’s Board of Directors.

The festival no longer sets aside the Saturday afternoon session for blues as it had for many years. During the past 20 years or so, blues music has decided to turn its back on its most creative child and identify itself with the guitar-centric, classic-rock crowd which has a terminal case of Peter Pan syndrome. The hierarchy of the blues has inexplicably walked away from the well healed, well funded, highly organized, well established institution that is jazz in favor of what is generally referred to as dinosaur rock.

As Johnny Otis said, "I'm not suggesting our music is the only music, but I am suggesting that there are certain elements in America's culture that are so precious that it would be a shame for them to go down the drain."

The Johnny Otis Show Live at Monterey captures a moment in time when the value of African-American music and that rich culture asserted itself in a very profound way. It was as if each performer in that revue was saying, ‘Hey folks, we are still here. Check this out. Listen to what we can do.’

Part of the fun of listening to this performance is the reaction of the crowd. This is before people were making the heil Hitler signs with their smart phones and posting on Facebook during the performance. They were listening and responding to the music. Sounds crazy, I know, but they were with the band, they were in the moment and an hour and ten minutes of those moments are captured on this album.

The blues festival season will be kicking off here in California and around the Northern Hemisphere very soon. There is nothing like attending an event where the cosmic collision of the tranquil California climate and coastal beauty of the Golden State make for the perfect setting to hear your favorite music. I just wish more musicians would aspire to sound something remotely like The Johnny Otis Show. It would be a worthy ambition.  

The Johnny Otis Show Live at Monterey was re-issued on CD with all nineteen tracks on a single disc by Sony Music’s Epic/Legacy imprint in 1993. It has since gone out of print. I have seen this CD for sale on Amazon for as high as $410.00.   

- David Mac