Johnny Otis - Music Career

Music Career

After playing drums in a variety of swing orchestras, including Lloyd Hunter's Serenaders, and Harlan Leonard's Rockets, he founded his own band in 1945 and had one of the most enduring hits of the big band era, "Harlem Nocturne". His band included Wynonie Harris and Charles Brown. In 1947, he and Bardu Ali opened the Barrelhouse Club in the Watts district of Los Angeles, California. He reduced the size of his band and hired singers Mel Walker, Little Esther Phillips and the Robins (who later became the Coasters). JET Apr 3, 1952. "Johnny Otis, White, Heads "Negro" Blues Band"p 60. He discovered the teenaged Phillips when she won one of the Barrelhouse Club's talent shows. With this band, which toured extensively throughout the United States as the California Rhythm and Blues Caravan, he had a long string of rhythm and blues hits through 1950.

In the late 1940s, he discovered Big Jay McNeely, who then performed on his "Barrelhouse Stomp". He began recording for the Newark, New Jersey-based Savoy label in 1949, and began releasing a stream of records that made the R&B chart, including "Double Crossing Blues", "Mistrustin' Blues" and "Cupid Boogie", which all featured either Little Esther or Mel Walker, or both, and all reached no. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart. He also began featuring himself on vibraphone on many of his recordings. Otis produced and played the vibraphone on Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love", which was no. 1 on the Billboard R and B chart for 10 weeks in 1955.

In January 1951, Otis released "Mambo Boogie," featuring congas, maracas, claves, and mambo saxophone guajeos in a blues progression. According to Vernon Boggs, this was the first R&B mambo

He moved to the Mercury label in 1951, but his chart success began to diminish. However, he discovered Etta James and produced and co-wrote her first hit, "Roll With Me, Henry" (also known as "The Wallflower"). Otis produced, co-wrote, and played drums on the original recording of "Hound Dog" written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller with vocals by Big Mama Thornton, and was given a writing credit on all six of the 1953 releases of the song. He was a successful songwriter; one of his most famous compositions is "Every Beat of My Heart", first recorded by The Royals in 1952 on Federal Records but which became a hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips then just 'Pips' in 1961. He also wrote "So Fine", which was originally recorded by The Sheiks in 1955 on Federal, and in 1959 was a hit for The Fiestas. As an artist and repertory man for King Records he discovered Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard, and Little Willie John, among others. He also became an influential disc-jockey in Los Angeles.

After starting his own label, Dig, in 1955, he continued to perform and appeared on regular TV shows in Los Angeles from 1957. On the strength of their success, he signed to Capitol Records. Featuring singer Marie Adams, and with his band now being credited as the Johnny Otis Show, he made a comeback, at first in the British charts with "Ma He's Making Eyes At Me" in 1957. In April 1958, he recorded his best-known recording, "Willie and the Hand Jive", a clave-based vamp, which relates to hand and arm motions in time with the music, called the hand jive. This went on to be a hit in the summer of 1958, peaking at no. 9 on the U.S. Pop chart, and becoming Otis' only Top 10 single. The single reached no. 1 on the Billboard R and B chart. The song was covered by Eric Clapton in 1974, and became a staple of his live repertoire. Otis' success with the song was short-lived, and he briefly moved to King Records in 1961, where he backed Johnny "Guitar" Watson on some recordings.

In 1969 he recorded an album of sexually explicit material under the name Snatch and the Poontangs. In 1970 he played at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival with Little Esther Phillips and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson. In the 1980s he had a weekly radio show in Los Angeles, playing R&B music, and also recorded with his son Shuggie Otis, releasing the 1982 album The New Johnny Otis Show.

Otis continued performing through the 1990s and headlined the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1990 and 2000, although because of his many other interests he went through long periods where he did not perform. He was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 as a nonperformer for his work as a songwriter and producer.