The Johnny Otis Show – The Watts Breakaway

5th September 2021 · 1970, 1970s, Blues, California, Funk, Music, Soul

Another lost classic from the funk vaults, The Watts Breakaway is just one of many musical achievements of Johnny Otis. The singer is Delmar ‘Mighty Mouth’ Evans and the guitarist may well by Johnny’s equally well-known son Shuggie Otis.
A man of many parts, over more than half a century Johnny’s stellar music career encompassed spells as (deep breath): bandleader, record producer, talent scout, label owner, nightclub impresario, disc jockey, TV variety show host, author, journalist, politician, R&B pioneer, rock’n’roll star, teacher and preacher.

Not bad for a California-born Greek-American who grew up in a black neighbourhood of Berkeley, California, where his dad owned a grocery store.

John Veliotes loved jazz, R&B and African-American culture so much that in his mid-teens he changed his name to Otis to sound “blacker” and married a woman of colour when he was only 19, at a time (1941) when interracial marriage was frowned upon.

“As a kid I decided that if our society dictated that one had to be black or white,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I would be black.”

In the 1940s he played drums in a swing band before assembling his own big-band jazz orchestra, releasing his first record in 1945. Moving into R&B, he had a string of hits in the late Forties and early Fifties, playing drums with a young Little Richard and Willie Mae ‘Big Mama’ Thornton.

He co-wrote and produced the song Hound Dog for her (and providing the ‘howling’ vocals) with Leiber & Stoller before it became a No.1 hit for Elvis. She was one of his many discoveries, as were Jackie Wilson and Etta James (when she was just 13).

In the late Fifties he moved out from behind the drum kit, taking over the singing on the 1958 hit Willie And The Hand Jive, and hosting his own TV variety show, moving over to rock’n’roll in the late Fifties.

Meanwhile his son Shuggie Otis began making his name as a blues guitarist – joining him on this blues-funk number from 1970 – and they would later team up as The New Johnny Otis Show.

Johnny also ran for the California State Assembly and became Deputy Chief of Staff for a Democratic Congressman, as well as founding his own Gospel church.

He spent his later years running a California health-food emporium and died in 2012 at the age of 90 – the very definition of a man who led a full life.

The singer of this tune, Delmar ‘Mighty Mouth’ Evans, was once in a band with the unfortunate name of Snatch & The Poontangs.