Shuggie Otis?
superfreak
15 Posts
Anybody known what happened with great Shuggie Otis? Did he recorded anything after "Inspiration information" and is he doing any gigs?
Comments
His Fillmore "comeback" timed with the LP reissue was absolutely tragic.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2001/07/09/DD158107.DTL&type=printable
Man, such a sad night.
Wow, that is sad. I seem to recall him appearing on David Letterman's show around the same time, playing "Inspiration Information" (?) with Paul Shaffer's house band and sounding fine.
Otherwise, just like the article said, after his last album didn't do as well as expected, he kept on gigging with his father as part of the Johnny Otis Show (which is where I saw him in 1993, at the Chicago Blues Festival). He was also playing in some early-'90s version of Love with Arthur Lee.
Maybe Key Largo has taken too tight of a grip
Yeah. I must say, sloppy would have been a compliment on that evening. My guess was he was pretty addled and unprepared for a full-scale gig. Hired a horn section, got cocky, didn't rehearse, got drunk/high/whatever, and the rest was history. The really funny thing was that I had just seen The Sons of Champlin (LITTLE DUDE ALERT!!) play the Fillmore and for what it's worth, they kind of smoked!
I was expecting way more from Shuggie.
Re: the Letterman appearance, I wouldn't doubt that a backing band with chops would do his song justice, and he probably made it through the lyrics just fine...for whatever reason (drugs or otherwise), fella simply wasn't/isn't bandleader material.
Yeah, I saw the Letterman performance as well, but the live show was a freaking disaster from what I heard.