Try a Little Tenderness

I chose to do this song today because Chris Brown is doing a concert in the city I live in at the end of August. It's got a bunch of people up in arms, because of his infamous assault on pop music icon Rihanna. So I thought featuring his cover and putting it up against Otis Redding would be funny, and also a great way to cash in on all the negative attention Chris Brown is getting.

I didn't want to do Otis again so soon. I featured him and the Temptations each doing My Girl previously. I was trying to put off repeating artists as long as I could (I haven't even featured the Four Tops yet). But in the end, I decided that cashing in on the Chis Brown abhorrence and boycotting, was just too good an opportunity to pass up.  I think I might even be a little late. People from where I live, do you still care?

Anyway, how about a little history on the song? It was written by Jimmy Campbell, Reg Connelly and Harry M. Woods, and initially recorded in 1932 by the Ray Noble Orchestra. Since then it's been covered by too many people to name. As far as I am aware, Otis's version is the best known, and really, that's as it should be.

Otis recorded his version in 1966. His band was Booker T & and M.G.'s, and Isaac Hayes produced the arrangement. The Otis version reworked the song, and gave it the powerful ending people who are familiar with the song will recognize. I don't know how much of the changes to attribute to him. I've tried listening to a few of the other versions to get a feel for the differences. His is quite different than the original. And by quite different I mean way better. I'm not saying the original is without merit however. Aretha Franklin did a version in 1962, and it seems to stay more inline with where the original went. She does sing the heck out of it though. But isn't that what you’d expect from Aretha?

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Otis's version peaked at number 25 on the Billboard Top 100, and Rolling Stone Listed it as the 204th greatest song of all time. I don't know how I feel about that ranking. There are so many great songs, I could see it being hard to find a spot for them all in a list of 500, and I would argue that if they’re just going off of the studio version, that that might be a fair placing. I'm totally breaking my no live songs rule again and using Otis's live version from London in 1967, which is way better. You might say that's unfair, but the Chris Brown version was like fake live in a movie. So as far as I'm concerned, it's fair game. Also Chris Brown is singing Try a Little Tenderness, and he's not even sorry that he beat up a woman (at least that's what the internet told me). And, his version is totally just a poor man's version of Otis's anyway.

Well, we might as well get to the songs. I think you guys can already guess the outcome, because I have not been doing a good job of being disinterested so far.

Otis Redding:

How awesome was that? Was it the first time you heard it? I remember the first time I heard it. I was blown away. I'd heard the studio version before, and it's good, but it has nothing on that one. That’s arguably the best thing ever recorded ever!

Okay, so now you're saying, "But AJ, you named your blog after Sam Cooke’s live album, One Night Stand: Live at the Harlem Square Club [it's in Miami Florida]. Do you think that Otis’s 1967 performance of Try a Little Tenderness is better than that?" That's a good question reader. It's a pretty tough call. You see, One Night Stand is a perfect set, and to really understand how amazing it is, you have to listen to it beginning to end, otherwise you miss out on all the little nuances that make it so perfect. With Try a Little Tenderness, (Otis whole 1967 London show is amazing too by the way, also the Paris one. Really, you can't have one without the other, because they both have their strengths and weaknesses. I could do a whole post on them. Also listen to those shows!) it's more about the performance of that single song that is so amazing. It stands out above everything else in the show, which again, is saying a lot. One could argue you get the same effect with Having a Party at the end of One Night Stand, but I'd argue that Somebody Have Mercy, into Bring it on Home, into Nothing can Change this Love is just as important in making One Night Stand so perfect as the way Having a Party closes out the set is. But with Try a Little Tenderness, it's like that song could be the whole show, Once Otis starts it, nothing else he's done up until that point matters anymore. Respect, his definitive version of My Girl, the Beatle stomping version of Day Tripper, the Stone crushing version of Satisfaction, it's like they never happened as soon as that horn plays the first note. When that freight train starts rolling, there's nothing that can stop it. That steam engine is pulling 100 cars, and they're all overflowing with coal and dynamite. It takes a minute or two to really get moving but it's pulling an enormous amount of weight. It still gets up to speed before you expect, and it just keeps moving faster until it's going too fast to stay on the tracks. And finally, when it comes off, the explosion is so spectacular that it's visible for thousands of miles.

Chris Brown:

Okay, so now we get to Chris Brown. I know you don't really want to listen to it. I didn't really want to either, but we have to for the sake of posterity. I decided not to use the clip from the movie, just because I thought it was too annoying. If you want to see it you can watch it here (the lip-syncing is terrible). I don't really have too much to say about his version. I already said it was basically just a poor man’s version of Otis's and I think that sums it up fairly well. Clearly, Chris misunderstood the song, and instead of trying a little bit of tenderness, he pussyfooted around it, and did an impossibly boring version. It's kind of ironic when you consider what happens when you leave him alone in a car with a woman. At one point he asks for a witness. I laughed out loud. He also tries to do Otis's special move and sings, “NA NA NA,” but he doesn't come close to pulling it off. You know what; it's not even a poor man's version of Otis's version. It's a parody.