The Heart of Rock and Soul by Dave Marsh

95 TRAMP, Otis Redding and Carla Thomas Produced by Steve Cropper; written by Lowell Fulsom and Jimmy McCracklin Stax 216 1967 Billboard: #26

According to legend, Carla Thomas improvised her insults. Certainlv Otis didn't stick very close to the script provided by Lowell Fulsom's year-old R&B hit in his replies. But if Otis and Carla were just toying with one another, what they came up with is a soul masterpiece that cuts to the essence of Stax and touches as close to the core of Otis Redding's vision of the world and his place in it as anything he ever did. The musical tension is provided by the deployment of horns and bass against Al Jackson's muscular, sinuous bass and snare drum pattern. Jackson opens the song solo and in its brief (2:58) span, he is given two other quick breaks. The horns and bass play staccato riffs that surge without ever quite resolving themselves - a lot like the dialogue they support. Thomas says Redding invited her to use whatever epithets she pleased, and her dripping contempt for his character-supposedly a country bumpkin but eventually revealed as a man of means-catches an entire era of black culture and its derisive mockery of new arrivals from the backwoods South. There was some truth to the roles that they played. Carla was, of course, the daughter of singer/disc jockey Rufus Thomas, which made her at least second generation Memphis black bourgeoisie. Otis grew up dirt poor, the son of a laborer/preacher/ invalid, which made him common as mud. Except that Otis Redding was a visionary. Part of that vision was a perverse pride in his origins. "You're country," Carla sneers. "You're straight from the Georgia woods." "That's good," drawls Otis, playing the boob but meaning it, too. Later, he comments. "My momma was Poppa too. " He refuses to take her seriously - except on one . . . subject. "You know what, Otis, I don't care what you say. you're still a tramp." "What!?" "That's right. You haven't even got a fat bankroll in your pocket. You probably haven't even got twenty-five cents." Otis doesn't hesitate. "I got six Cadillacs, five Lincolns, four Fords, six Mercurys, three T-Birds, a Mustang . . ." He doesn't even finish the list, because something more important is on his mind. "Oooo, I m a luh-ver, " he cries, stretching out the word, making of it an anthem, a way of defining himself and of telling this city fool what's really important. And that, sure as the world, is the heart of Otis Redding's artistic vision. He may have been country, he may have played the fool, but when it came right down to it, he was an artist because he was a lover. Nobody has ever found a higher calling.

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