Midnight at the Barrelhouse

As a big fan of Johnny Otis's crackling memoirs Listen to the Lambs (1968) and Upside Your Head: Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue (1993)—each reissued featuring a foreword by George Lipsitz—I was originally skeptical about the added value of a standard biography. Why give up Otis's unique voice—honed on the bandstand, radio, and pulpit—for a third-person account of his life? While the memoirs are still essential, my reservations about Midnight at the Barrelhouse subsided within the first twenty pages. Lipsitz brings rich historical context and his own brand of sizzling prose to the life and times of one of the most holistic, driven, and connected musicians of the twentieth century. Born in 1921 to Greek immigrant parents in northern California, Otis found a new home within the African American community of Los Angeles. He committed his life to the celebration of black culture and the social, political, and economic well-being of African Americans in Los Angeles and beyond. The man kept busy. The drummer performed with a legion of jazz greats before building his own rhythm and blues cavalcade, the Johnny Otis Show, into one of the premiere attractions on the West Coast. The show—for which Otis served as performer, promoter, talent scout, songwriter, record producer, and master of ceremonies—helped establish numerous rhythm and blues stars, including Big Mama Thornton, Etta James, and Esther Phillips. He later provided veritable dissertations on black music on his local radio and television shows between 1954 and 1961. He also opened a recording studio, taught courses at local colleges, wrote a long-running newspaper column, worked for politicians, and established and served as pastor for a small church, among other things. Throughout all these ventures, Otis avoided self-aggrandizement, Lipsitz explains. He opened his stage show to a rotating cadre of new and veteran black performers just as he often turned his radio show over to community activists. In the process he built a vast network of friends and collaborators committed to promoting African American arts and black freedom

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