Otis Redding - LONELY & BLUE...(LP) - Vinyl

Otis Redding's recording career really only lasted five years, from 1962 through 1967 (seven studio albums in all), and the balance of it, along with his biggest hits, really only came in the last two years of that time, with his biggest hit and first number one, "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," released after his death. All of it was enough, though, to establish Redding as the greatest performer of the classic deep soul era, a designation he undoubtedly deserves. There are plenty of greatest-hits-type collections out there for those interested in Redding's pop and R&B chart impact, and at first glance, Lonely & Blue: The Deepest Soul of Otis Redding seems like another of those. It has some of his classic hits, true, like "I've Been Loving You Too Long," "Free Me," and "These Arms of Mine," but the rest of the dozen tracks are more obscure, although they're neither filler nor randomly chosen, each contributing to the overall theme, emerging as a powerfully unified compilatio