Live in Europe is a
live album from
soul singer
Otis Redding. It was Redding's first live album as well as the only live album released during his lifetime, issued exactly five months before his death on December 10, 1967. The album was recorded during the
Stax/Volt tour of Europe and Redding is backed by
Booker T. & the MG's. Recorded at the Olympia Theatre, Paris; March 21, 1967.[citation needed]
The album is currently available on
compact disc, digitally remastered by Bill Inglot and Dan Hersch as part of the
Atlantic &
Atco Remasters Series done on
Rhino Records. Alternately, seven of its ten tracks appear as bonus tracks to the 2008 reissue of Otis Blue or the 2016 reissue of The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul, also on Rhino.
Critical reception and legacy
In a 1969 piece called "A Short and Happy History of Rock", published by Stereo Review,
Robert Christgau selected Live in Europe as a representative Redding LP in his basic rock "library" of 25 albums. He went on to write of Redding and the album in the context of rock history:
Meanwhile, back where it all started,
black music was becoming self-consciously black, returning to
blues and
gospel, and the late Otis Redding was king. Despite the limitations of in-concert recording, this album is his best because Redding's stage presence was integral to his popularity, and because it contains most of his best songs. Remember that the audience is white. No other black performer has ever been able to bridge the racial barrier so completely while remaining so true to himself and his skin. That's why we miss him so much.[4]
However, Christgau's later appraisals of the album have ranged from it "captur[ing] a sensitive soul man at his toughest and most outgoing"[5] to it being "among [Redding's] worst" due to "too many concessions to an English audience that wanted fast rock and roll songs".[6]
