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Shuggie Otis gave a radio interview tonight, airing on 93.9 FM WNYC and 101.9 FM WDET (in Detroit). If you missed the interview, you can check it out at Soundcheck (WNYC Radio).

Shuggie Otis’ new 2CD collection Inspiration Information/Wings Of Love is available now at Amazon and iTunes! Pitchfork has given the album a stellar 8.8 rating and named it Best New Reissue. Get your copy today! Here is an except from Pitchfork’s review:

Wings of Love, a compilation that plays like a bonafide album– it’s got an “intro” and everything– and a good one, at that … is a quietly amazing document of Otis’ doggged determination over the quarter century between leaving the business and the first Inspiration reissue. …Wings is packaged as an addendum to a reissue, but it’s no simple B-sides collection.

If all this isn’t convincing enough, perhaps Wings’ outlandish 11 minute title track, sequenced right in the middle of the album, will. At once, it’s a reminder that Otis had few peers as a shredder (at his peak, both Bowie and the Stones offered him sideman gigs), and the sort of wild, proggy imagination that would make Yes album-art designer Roger Dean blush. It starts with seashore sound effects– waves crashing, seagulls squawking– and blossoms into the kind of earnestly majestic, new age prog-funk that might not be everyone’s bag, but which is impossible not to appreciate on its own merits, because it’s performed with such conviction. Such is the wholly unique career trajectory of Shuggie Otis, who is now touring for the first time in 40 years. The Child Prodigy, the Next Big Thing, the Cultishly Admired LA Recluse. Johnny Alexander Veliotes, Jr., the man who vanished, but never stopped.

Read more of Shuggie Otis’ Inspiration Information/Wings Of Love review at Pitchfork.

To commemorate 40 years since releasing his last album, Inspiration Information, Shuggie Otis pairs the reissued classic with Wings of Love, a new collection of unreleased recordings made during the decades he searched for a record deal. Otis spoke with Billboard about that constant search, the basement that made him famous, and the catch-22 with his song “Strawberry Letter 23.”

Q: At what point did you realize Wings of Love should see the light of day? When did it feel right?


A: Well, it felt right right after I recorded it. You change as you grow older: your mind changes, your body changes, everything changes. I guess your tastes change, too. And you don’t want to go repeat yourself. I won’t try to write a song until I hear something in my head or I’m practicing and a song comes out of it.

Read more from Shuggie Otis’ interview with Billboard.

The sound of Shuggie Otis feels like nothing you’ve heard before and yet it’s magically familiar – a warm, psychedelic soul/blues that has infused masses of modern r’n’b, hip hop, pop and funk. His songs have yielded smash-hit covers (The Brother Johnson’s 1977 version of his gorgeous “Strawberry Letter 23” later soundtracked a Coke advert) and countless samples by the likes of Outkast, J Dilla and Beyoncé. Otis’s high-profile fans have included BB King, Prince and The Roots’ main man Questlove, who noted: “His music is so potent that it only blossomed 30 years after it was first released.”

The man himself – born Johnny Alexander Veliotes Jr in LA, 1953 – also seems to be blossoming again. Otis was a child prodigy singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist consigned to unsung hero status, despite creating three classic albums: 1969 debut Here Comes Shuggie Otis; Freedom Flight (1971); and Inspiration Information (1974). He was barely out of his teens and planning his fourth LP when he was dropped by his label.

Decades of apparent silence followed but he’s back on the road again and about to release Wings Of Love, an album of excellent unheard tracks, along with an expanded reissue of Inspiration Information.

Read more at Metro.co.uk.