An appreciation: Johnny Otis’ expert ear

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Johnny Otis, a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, discovered Chicago music legends Etta James and Jackie Wilson.

Updated: January 29, 2012 2:31AM

Johnny Otis, who died Jan. 17 at age 90, embraced the generous soul of Chicago.

The colorful rhythm and blues bandleader, a native of Vallejo, Calif., was a character who could have rolled out of a 1960s West Side blues club on a Saturday night and tumbled into the Maxwell Street Market on a Sunday morning.

The son of Greek immigrants, he used to call himself “black by persuasion.” An ordained preacher of an interracial church, he also wrote a weekly column for the Sentinel, one of the key black newspapers in Los Angeles. He discovered Etta James, who had her first success at Chess Records in Chicago, as well as Jackie Wilson, who recorded for Chicago’s Brunswick label.

Otis was a hustler who always stopped for the sound of humanity.

His last Chicago appearance came at the 1993 Chicago Blues Festival, where he was a last-minute addition to fill in for an ailing Katie Webster. Otis, who had not played Chicago since the 1950s, fronted an 11-piece blues swing band that included his son Shuggie (a.k.a. Johnny Otis Jr.) on guitar.

His health was already in decline. He was dealing with pneumonia and a blood clot in his leg.

In an interview weeks before the festival, he was in a reflective mood, but then, Johnny Otis always knew that tomorrow can be today.

Through his bedroom window, he saw the Nellie Belle XII, the last of the legendary Johnny Otis Tour buses. During the 1950s and ’60s, Otis led a caravan of minstrel-inspired road shows that included Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson. The buses rolled across America’s emerging highway system.

Black rhythm and blues music was becoming accessible to all walks of life.

“I’m lying in bed, but if I stand up, I could look out the window on the farm and see the bus,” Otis said in a whisper from the Johnny Otis Market & Deli in Sebastopol, Calif., near San Francisco. “It’s sitting out there on blocks. We don’t use it, but it is in perfect condition. It’s a Greyhound-type bus from 1961. It has hundreds of thousands of miles on it.”

Each mile was a memory for Otis. In 1994, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer for his work as songwriter and producer. Otis produced Big Mama Thornton’s original recording of “Hound Dog” that led to the Elvis Presley smash. Otis was a peaceful Phil Spector.

Another Chicago connection?

Check out the Johnny Otis hand-clap beat, which Bo Diddley popularized at Chess Records.

Otis’ first job came in the late 1930s, playing drums for Count Otis Matthews, a barrelhouse piano player who had migrated to Oakland, Calif., from the Mississippi Delta. Johnny Otis was just a teenager and still hanging around under his original name of John Alexander Veliotes. Matthews used a West African “shave-and-a-haircut-six-bits” beat that became the cornerstone for Otis’ best-known hits, “Willie and the Hand Jive” and “Crazy Country Hop.”

“I had never played drums before,” Otis recalled in our 1993 interview. “The Count told me not to worry about it. He said, ‘All you have to do is go shave-and-a-haircut-six-bits when I play my featured number.’ We got a little raggedy drum set together. When the time was right, he would start the beat, look at me and smile, and call up a couple girls from the audience. He’d give them tin cans with rocks inside to shake like maracas. That enabled us to get the girls up close to where we could hit on them.”

Otis polished the primitive sound after hooking up with rhythm and swing king Louis Jordan, the primary influence on Chuck Berry.

“I idolized Louis Jordan,” said Otis, who once hosted an NPR special on Jordan. “I watched him as a kid. First, he was a great musician. He was a fine showman, entertainer, singer and dancer. He was a complete delight to see.”

Otis absorbed all of Jordan’s qualities into his show and revue.

You don’t see that anymore.

Otis formed a new revue in 1981 and in 1982, released “The New Johnny Otis Show (With Shuggie Otis)” for Chicago’s Alligator Records. The 10-song CD, still available on Alligator, highlighted Shuggie and also featured heavies like the late Earl Palmer (of Professor Longhair and Little Richard fame) on drums and Coasters vocalist Wendell Perry.

“I had reached out to Johnny,” Iglauer said last week. “I was a huge fan of [Otis’ 1969 Kent recording] ‘Cold Shot’ and I had bought [Otis’ X-rated effort] ‘Snatch and the Poontangs.’ I simply called him up and asked if he was interested in recording. Shuggie was highlighted because I chose to highlight him.”

Despite a reclusive nature, Shuggie Otis is a successful artist in his own right. The Rolling Stones asked him to replace guitarist Mick Taylor, but Shuggie declined.

In 1981, Shuggie was 28 years old. He had released a couple of mind-blowing solo albums, including the 1974 acid-jazz-tinged “Inspiration Information” that influenced Lenny Kravitz. The Alligator record was produced by Johnny Otis, and Iglauer served as executive producer.

“Shuggie actually did all the guitar work in one night,” Iglauer recalled. “We didn’t cut the [10] tracks live with guitar. Shuggie came in and played lead and rhythm parts from mid-afternoon literally until 2 in the morning. Johnny did all the communication with Shuggie. It was clear that Shuggie was a strange guy. He kept his head down, and it was hard to make eye contact with him. He was pleasant, he just wasn’t socializing. Johnny was pushing him very hard to get done.

“At 2 o’clock in the morning, we were done, and Johnny said, ‘I’ve got to take Shuggie to work.’ And I said, ‘What kind of work does he do?’ Johnny said, ‘He has to be at work at 4 in the morning. He throws papers,’ meaning Shuggie was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck throwing newspapers on people’s front porches.”

Iglauer used to attend services at Johnny Otis’ Landmark Community Church, where parishioners included Etta James, jazz-scat pianist King Pleasure and actress Lawanda Page (Aunt Esther from “Sanford and Son”).

“The church was part of the same rambling house where he had his office, where he raised rare birds in an aviary attached to the garage,” Iglauer said. “I had seen his church choir. He wanted to feature Charles Willliams, who was lead singer in the choir.”

Williams does a cresting, sterling cover of “Every Beat of My Heart,” the 1952 Royals hit written by Otis. The Detroit-based doo-wop group was discovered by Otis and featured Hank Ballard, who went on to popularize “The Twist.”

Iglauer said, “Johnny didn’t see the album as featuring himself. He didn’t consider himself to be that great a singer. He chose the songs and the players. He told me, ‘If it feels good, it is good.’ No matter how good the playing and singing is, if you don’t feel it, it has no value.

“And I’ve tried to remember that every time I’ve done a record.”

“Willie and the Hand Jive” and “Crazy Country Hop,” both hits in 1958, deployed feel-good syncopated beats. The tasty lick on “Hand Jive” was played by Jimmy Nolen, who pioneered funk guitar in the mid-1960s with James Brown. Eric Clapton covered “Willie and the Hand Jive” and “Crazy Country Hop” in the 1970s, and in the mid-1980s, the Skeletons out of Springfield, Mo., had a regional hit with “Crazy Country Hop.”

Besides crossing over into the African-American community, Otis was a smash in the emerging Hispanic neighborhoods of Los Angeles. In George Lipsitz’s brilliant 2010 biography, Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story (University of Minnesota Press, $24.95), Ruben Guevara (of the 1970s Los Angeles rock band Ruben & the Jets) said of Otis, “His swing didn’t swing. It jumped. And the East Side [barrios] jumped right along with him.”

Otis was the older brother of Nicholas A. Veliotes, former U.S. ambassador to Jordan (1978-81) and to Egypt (1984-86). Under his birth name, Otis ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the California State Assembly and served on the staff of Mervyn M. Dymally, a Democratic assemblyman who later became a U.S. representative and California’s first black lieutenant governor.

Otis was married 70 years. His wife, Phyllis, survived him, as did two daughters, nine grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren and a great-great grandchild.

Iglauer will never forget attending Otis’ church. “It was filled with pimps, prostitutes and drug addicts,” Iglauer said. “He said, ‘I don’t care where you were last night or where you were an hour ago. I care where you are now and where you are going to be in the future.’ He considered that he and all pimps and prostitutes were created equal.

“And that was part of Johnny Otis’ generosity.”