In mid October I heard on "Bluesville," a Sirius Radio music channel dedicated to the Blues, a masterpiece of a song: "I'm Sick, Y'All," by Otis Redding. You can listen to it at Rhapsody.
Of course I'd heard of Otis Redding, but I realized I didn't really know anything about him. And I thought I'd probably heard the song before, but I hadn't previously recognized how superbly crafted it is.
More below the fold.
Here are the lyrics to "I'm Sick Y'All," thanks to lyricsdownload:
Standin' outside, y'all
It's raining, children
Gettin' soaking wet
And it's raining, y'all
Been put out, y'all
Nowhere to go, children
People all ask me, son
Tell me what's wrong with you
Tell 'em I've been sick, y'all, yeah
Yes, I've been sick, children, yeah
My baby got me
In a terrible shape
Lord, she got me sufferin'
With a headache, yeah
Lord, pain in my heart workin'
Dragging my feet, y'all
Twelve long days, children
Had a bite to eat now
Y'all wanna know, yeah
Tell me what's wrong with me
Said I've been sick, y'all, yeah
Tell you I'm sick, y'all, yeah
Now no doctor's medicine
Will do me no good
Lord have mercy, children
I wished it would, yeah
Somebody, sick, bad shape
Pain, children, tremblin', y'all
Legs are tremblin', Lord
Hands are tied
Feel like I got a headache
Right here in my side
Heart's turning over
Beating like a drum, y'all
Tom tom tom, yeah
Heart's keep a beating, baby
Now what's wrong with me
Tell y'all I'm sick, y'all
Said I'm sick, y'all
Got me in a terrible shape
Yeah honey
Sufferin', children
Lord, I'm tired of it, honey
Rain is cold, children
Burnin' my side, y'all
Standing on the outside
Water in my shoes, children
She got me suffering, baby
Oh that's bad news, man
She got me moaning, y'all
Troubles out calm, yeah
She got me startin' to think
Where did I come from, y'all
Tell you I've been sick, y'all
Yeah, I've been sick, y'all
Everybody wanna know...
To begin with, the song has an almost archetypical blues/nascent soul arrangement: a relentless drum; melody carried mostly by brass; and sparing but poignant use of electric guitar.
Then there's the vocals. Otis Redding is probably best known for "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay," but that song barely hints at his vocal power. In "I'm Sick Y'All," Redding flirts with plaintive wailing, but he doesn't in the end arrive there. His is not the voice of a helpless, pleading man. It's rather that of someone who is just down for a moment.
If you read or listen closely, the song is about heartache, but there's no dwelling on it. The events and the causes don't matter so much as the effect, and the singer seems to be pleading more for practical understanding than for sympathy: there is no need to put yourself in his shoes; only recognize that he's not himself.
And the lyrics. Illness for humanity, I probably needn't remind anyone during the H1N1 epidemic, is grounds for being cast out. And here the singer has "been put out," and is "standing on the outside." But there's no complaint, there's no excuse made: this is just how it is.
There are a couple notable departures from the Blues in the song. In standard Blues, the lyrics do not address anyone; the singer is generally lamenting with no acknowledgment of an audience. Here, it is not so much lamenting as explaining: he is addressing "y'all" and explaining his situation to "children." The choice of the last word is also telling: he is not addressing just anyone, but "children," an audience of inferior stature that is likely to be relying on him in some way and expecting him to get over whatever is wrong with him
The signature cadence of Blues lyrics is to relay in one phrase some unfortunate occurrence, and then to repeat the phrase, as if the first line is to recognize the event, and the second is to recognize that nothing can be done about it. The Blues are, in this regard, perhaps the most notable artistic echoing of the history of slavery and institutional racism in America: circumstances are inconceivably horrible, but still you just have to put up with it.
"I'm Sick, Y'All" has just a very little bit of this cadence with the title line. Notably the repetition comes at the very end of the main verses, whereas the Blues generally starts off each verse with a repeated phrase. There is nowhere near the emphasis on the finality of the unfortunate situation in this song as there is in the Blues.
On the whole, "I'm Sick, Y'All" conveys an angst that the Blues does not: in each, something is wrong. But in the Blues, it just has to be accepted; in "I'm Sick, Y'All" the many departures from standard Blues all suggest that whatever is wrong, it is not OK. And the general pattern of "sickness" is that you either get better or you die.
And I think this is why the song struck a chord with me recently. We are in the midst of both the aftermath of a terrible recession and some regrettable foreign entanglements. A lot of people are in places they never imagined they'd be, and they're pretty frantic to get back to somewhere they can recognize. The song even speaks to health care reform (d'oh!), not so much with the matter of sickness as with the matter of being alone to deal with it, which is strongly the suggestion of the song. The lyrics do not suggest someone who just has to call in his government mandated health insurance coverage to make everything right again.
So, what happened to Otis Redding? I had suspected that he might be among the host of musicians who'd had a few hit singles but then failed to follow up successfully, and who ultimately end up playing smaller and smaller venues for the rest of their diminished careers. But I found that it was not so.
Otis Redding died in a plane crash in Madison, Wisconsin on December 10, 1967. He was 26 years old.