No two people are ever going to agree on how or when hip hop came about. There are myriad ideas and reasons behind everyone's individual perspective, but that doesn't mean that we no longer need to speculate on the topic.
It's indisputable that during the late '60s a new kind of consciousness was washing over a generation of people in the States. The revolution that was to free us all never came to fruition. And while we can each blame our parent's generation for not having universal health care by now, the Boomers and some of the forward thinking members of the generation even older then them were able to explode musical boundaries.
Again, we can all argue about hip hop coming from funk, soul, blues, Jamaica, Germany or BK. Johnny Otis, though, is a part of the music despite being of Greek descent and playing in jazz bands during the '40s and RnB groups during the '50s and '60s.
Apart from hosting a wildly successful television showcase for musicians based in LA, Otis did a fair amount of recording - occasionally with his then teen-aged son, Shuggie Otis. While the younger Otis would go on to release several influential if not successful albums, it's on Cold Shot, attributed to the Johnny Otis Show, and Snatch and the Poontangs' For Adults Only, that the two musicians would contribute to the antecedents of hip hop.
Over the space of those two discs, the Otis' worked out the music behind a few blue lyrics. "Two Time Slim" finds Delmar "Mighty Mouth" Evans describing various sexual maladies that he's dealt with. In its delivery, the song works in a slow-speak manner as a whining slide guitar guides Evans through his story. It's not "King Tim III (Personality Jock)," but Evans should be easy to figure for a prehistoric rap hero. The fact that both Johnny and Shuggie Otis would go on to shred some funk tracks doesn't hurt the family's legacy either.
It's indisputable that during the late '60s a new kind of consciousness was washing over a generation of people in the States. The revolution that was to free us all never came to fruition. And while we can each blame our parent's generation for not having universal health care by now, the Boomers and some of the forward thinking members of the generation even older then them were able to explode musical boundaries.
Again, we can all argue about hip hop coming from funk, soul, blues, Jamaica, Germany or BK. Johnny Otis, though, is a part of the music despite being of Greek descent and playing in jazz bands during the '40s and RnB groups during the '50s and '60s.
Apart from hosting a wildly successful television showcase for musicians based in LA, Otis did a fair amount of recording - occasionally with his then teen-aged son, Shuggie Otis. While the younger Otis would go on to release several influential if not successful albums, it's on Cold Shot, attributed to the Johnny Otis Show, and Snatch and the Poontangs' For Adults Only, that the two musicians would contribute to the antecedents of hip hop.
Over the space of those two discs, the Otis' worked out the music behind a few blue lyrics. "Two Time Slim" finds Delmar "Mighty Mouth" Evans describing various sexual maladies that he's dealt with. In its delivery, the song works in a slow-speak manner as a whining slide guitar guides Evans through his story. It's not "King Tim III (Personality Jock)," but Evans should be easy to figure for a prehistoric rap hero. The fact that both Johnny and Shuggie Otis would go on to shred some funk tracks doesn't hurt the family's legacy either.
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