Johnny Otis

Personal life

Johnny Otis was born Ioannis Alexandres Veliotes in Vallejo, California, to Greek immigrant parents. His father worked as a longshoreman and ran a grocery store, and his mother was a painter. He had a sister named Dorothy and a brother, Nicholas, who later served as the U.S. Ambassador to Jordan and Egypt. Otis grew up in a mostly Black neighborhood in Berkeley, where his family owned a store.

He chose to identify as Black both personally and professionally, once writing that he decided early on that if society forced a choice between Black and white, he would be Black. At 19, he married Phyllis Walker, an 18-year-old woman of African American and Filipino heritage he had known since childhood.

His mother strongly opposed the marriage, so the couple eloped to Reno, Nevada, where interracial marriage was legal. They had four children: sons Shuggie and Nicholas, both musicians, and daughters Janice and Laura. The couple also raised their grandson Lucky, Shuggie’s son with Miss Mercy Fontenot of the GTOs.

Music career

Johnny Otis began playing drums as a teenager, having bought a set by forging his father's signature on a credit slip. Soon after, he dropped out of Berkeley High School, in his junior year. He joined a local band, the West Oakland House Rockers, with his pianist friend "Count" Otis Matthews. By 1939, they were performing at many local functions, mostly in and around Oakland and Berkeley, and were popular among their peers.

In the early 1940s Otis played in swing orchestras, including Lloyd Hunter's Serenaders and Harlan Leonard's Rockets. He founded his own band in 1945; they had one of the most enduring hits of the big-band era, "Harlem Nocturne", a composition by Earle Hagen. His band included Wynonie Harris, Charles Brown, and Illinois Jacquet, among others. In 1947, he and Bardu Ali opened the Barrelhouse Club in the Watts district of Los Angeles.

Otis reduced the size of his band and hired the singers Mel Walker, Little Esther (born Esther Mae Jones and later known as Esther Phillips) and the Robins (who later became the Coasters). He discovered the teenaged Esther Jones when she won a talent show at the Barrelhouse Club. With this band, he toured extensively in the United States as the California Rhythm and Blues Caravan, and had a string of rhythm-and-blues hits through 1950. Otis and his Orchestra played at the third annual Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr. on September 7, 1947.

Woody Herman, The Valdez Orchestra, The Blenders, T-Bone Walker, Slim Gaillard, The Honeydrippers, Sarah Vaughn and the Three Blazers also performed that same day. Otis discovered the tenor saxophonist Big Jay McNeely, who played on his up-tempo "Barrelhouse Stomp". He began recording Little Esther and Mel Walker for Savoy Records, based in Newark, New Jersey, in 1949, and also released a stream of hit records, including "Double Crossing Blues", "Mistrustin' Blues" and "Cupid's Boogie", all of which reached number 1 on the Billboard R&B chart.

In 1950, Billboard selected Otis as the R&B Artist of the Year. He also began playing the vibraphone on many of his recordings. In 1951, Otis released "Mambo Boogie", featuring congas, maracas, claves, and mambo saxophone guajeos in a blues progression, the first R&B mambo ever recorded. Otis moved to Mercury Records in 1951.

He discovered the singer Etta James, who was then 13 years old, at one of his talent shows. He produced and co-wrote her first hit, "The Wallflower (Dance with Me, Henry)". In 1952, while in Houston, Texas, Otis auditioned the singer Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton. He produced, co-wrote, and played drums on her 1952 recording of "Hound Dog" (the first recording of the song); he and his band also provided the backup "howling" vocals.

The song was co-written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Otis had a legal dispute with the songwriting duo over the credits after he learned that Leiber and Stoller had revised the contractual agreement before the singer Elvis Presley recorded a new version of the song, which quickly became a number 1 hit. Claiming Leiber and Stoller illegally had the original contract nullified and rewrote a new one stating that the two boys (who were both 17) were the only composers of the song, Otis sued.

The judge decided the case in favor of the defendants, ruling that the first contract with Otis was null and void because they were minors when they signed it. One of Otis's most famous compositions is the ballad "Every Beat of My Heart", first recorded by the Royals in 1952 for Federal Records. It was a hit for Gladys Knight and the Pips in 1961. Otis also produced and played the vibraphone on "Pledging My Love", by the singer Johnny Ace, which was number 1 on the Billboard R&B chart for 10 weeks.

Another successful song for Otis was "So Fine", originally recorded by the Sheiks in 1955 for Federal and a hit for the Fiestas in 1959. As an artist and repertory man for King Records, Otis discovered numerous young prospects who later became successful, including Jackie Wilson, Hank Ballard, and Little Willie John. Otis hosted a television show, The Johnny Otis Show, and became an influential disc jockey in Los Angeles, with a program on radio station KFOX in Long Beach in 1955.

In 1955, Otis started his own label, Ultra Records (he changed the name to Dig after releasing five singles). He continued to perform and appeared on TV shows in Los Angeles from 1957. On the strength of their success, he signed with Capitol Records. Featuring the singer Marie Adams and with his band, now known 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 song, "Willie and the Hand Jive", a clave-based vamp. It was a hit in the summer of 1958, peaking at number 9 on the U.S. Pop chart, and was Otis's only Top 10 single. The single reached number 1 on the Billboard R&B chart.

Otis's success with the song was somewhat short-lived, and he briefly moved to King Records in 1961, where he worked with Johnny "Guitar" Watson. In 1959, Otis auditioned the Coachella Valley, California band the Renes which featured a young Alan O'Day on vocals. Impressed, Otis recorded and produced the band performing three O'Day originals and a few covers at El Dorado Studios in Los Angeles, but the recordings were never released as most of the members of the Renes were minors.

In 1969, Otis landed a deal with Columbia Records and recorded the albums Cold Shot! and the sexually explicit Snatch and the Poontangs, both of which featured his son Shuggie and the singer Delmar "Mighty Mouth" Evans. A year later, he recorded a double live album of his band's performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Johnny Otis Show Live at Monterey! with Little Esther Phillips, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Pee Wee Crayton, Ivory Joe Hunter, and The Mighty Flea, among others.

A portion of the performance was featured in the Clint Eastwood film Play Misty for Me. Live at Monterey was released in 1971 by Epic Records. Otis toured less in the 1970s. He started the Blues Spectrum label and released a series of thirteen albums, Rhythm and Blues Oldies, which featured the 1950s R&B artists Louis Jordan, Charles Brown, Big Joe Turner, Pee Wee Crayton, Joe Liggins, Gatemouth Moore, Roy Milton, Amos Milburn, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, and Richard Berry, with three of those albums by Otis himself.

Advocacy and other work

In the 1960s, Otis entered journalism and politics. He lost an election for a seat in the California State Assembly, then became deputy chief of staff to state Assemblyman, later Democratic Congressman, Mervyn M. Dymally. He was an outspoken advocate for racial equality and Black self-determination. His 1968 book Listen to the Lambs, written in response to the 1965 Watts uprising, combined autobiography, political analysis, and eyewitness testimony from Black residents of Watts.

Otis argued that amid persistent white racism, Black communities should prioritize economic independence and political control of their own communities, rather than push for social integration. He criticized systemic racism, police brutality, racist beauty standards, economic inequality, and the Vietnam War, and characterized racial disparities in health and life expectancy as consequences of social conditions. He wrote for the Los Angeles Sentinel, supported Black political and cultural institutions, and used his radio and television programs to promote African American musicians.

Biographer George Lipsitz described Otis as a white musician who believed he was obliged to the culture from which he benefited. Otis later wrote Upside Your Head! in response to the 1992 Los Angeles uprising. He founded and preached in the New Landmark Community Gospel Church in Santa Rosa, California, which closed in mid-1998. The Johnny Otis Show relocated from KPFK to KPFA in Berkeley, airing Saturday mornings.

After his market in Sebastopol opened in 1994, he broadcast from there with his band playing live, later from the Powerhouse Brewing Co. After his retirement in late 2004, his grandson Lucky hosted the show at KPFA until late 2006, when Otis and his wife moved back to Los Angeles.

Did You Know?

• He married Phyllis Walker on May 2, 1941, when he was 19 and she was 18; they eloped to Reno, Nevada, because interracial marriage was accepted there.
• Otis produced, co-wrote, and played drums on Big Mama Thornton's 1952 recording of "Hound Dog", the first recording of the song.
• Otis's younger brother, Nicholas A. Veliotes, became the U.S. Ambassador to Jordan (1978–1981) and Egypt (1984–1986).