Cover Stories #1: I Can't Turn You Loose

“Cover Stories” are my attempts to trace the histories of individual songs, maybe learning a thing or two about the evolution of musical styles along the way.

One of the catchiest, hardest-hitting soul classics began life as an impromptu B-side.

Otis Redding went into the studio in 1965 to record “Just One More Day,” a fairly standard-issue ballad, for Stax. It needed a B-side, so he and guitarist Steve Cropper put together something livelier to go with it. The result was “I Can’t Turn You Loose,” which Redding worked up with the horns in “about ten minutes,” according to Cropper. The guitarist’s own riff was, presumably, just as informal.

Thanks to some confused marketing, both sides of the single charted, but neither became a big hit. “Loose” might have broken through with a more dedicated effort, but it maxed out at #11 on the Billboard chart.

The signature guitar line and the equally memorable horn accents were there from the beginning:

If you have the Blues Brothers version in mind, the original is downright stately. Otis thought so, too. As soon as he took the song on the road, it picked up a lot of speed. Here’s a recording from just a few months later:

The record moves along at 128 beats per minute. The live version goes up to 154. With more time to develop, Cropper varies the guitar riff, too. Instead of sticking with the same seven-note pattern, he mixes in a descending scale that moves the guitar into the foreground.

Even at a faster tempo, though, there’s a leisurely element to the tune that would persist in every cover. It’s a 24-bar blues, not a standard 12-bar, so the band spends twice as long on each chord. It’s actually a 28-bar form, with an extra four measures at the end, better to enjoy the instrumental grooves.

Second lives

Unsurprisingly, other bands almost immediately added “Loose” to their repertoires. You can hear Sly and the Family Stone’s version from the last year’s discovery, The First Family: Live at Winchester Cathedral 1967. It was recorded less than a year after Redding’s Whisky a Go Go sets:

Same song, same energy, such a different take. Redding is the archetypal soul-revue frontman, yet here we have two vocalists echoing off each other for a much more collective sound.

An even bigger shift, to my ears, is the addition of the organ. We keep the horn riffs, or variations on them, throughout. The organ introduces the tune with Cropper’s guitar line, but instead of persisting for the duration of the song, the guitar part drops out. Instead we get longer tones from the organ. With the chunky bass and drums hovering on the very top of the beat, we don’t lose anything from the shift.

A year later, Sly’s version appeared on record:

Interestingly, Sly landed on the same tempos that Redding did. The studio version is about 132 beats per minute (compared to Redding’s 128), while the Winchester Cathedral take sits at 150. That said, the Family Stone is human: By the end of the studio version, the tempo had started creeping back up.

For the album—Dance to the Music—the band strays further from the original. The first chorus is only organ and vocals, with the organ occasionally dropping out entirely. Eventually the band comes in and delivers the familiar horn parts, but the vocals remain the focus. As a cover, it isn’t entirely successful, but it’s noteworthy for how many new ideas it introduced. While every other band was playing high-energy copies to get people dancing, Sly worked out an entirely new take on the song.

The Chambers Brothers released a version in 1968 as well. It led off their album A New Time - A New Day:

No horns! We get psychedelic-tinged guitars instead. Compared to the Family Stone version, it’s a bit of a disappointment: Less excitement, and a vocalist who tries to match Redding’s wail—but, being anyone other than Otis Redding, doesn’t really pull it off.

It’s still great fun, probably even more so in their hands as an extended jam. But with the other versions at our fingertips, the Chamber Brothers don’t have a lot to offer to the modern listener on this song.

Unlocking the briefcase

After that late-1960s flurry of activity, “Loose” retreated to live performances, most of which went unrecorded and unreleased. The revival had to wait about a decade, until Steve Cropper joined the Blues Brothers band.

Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi wanted to honor their blues heroes. In rehearsals, Cropper suggested adding some songs that people could dance to. That’s how “Soul Man” made the cut, and I suspect that’s how “I Can’t Turn You Loose” snuck into the set as well.

Unfortunately, “Loose” is relegated to intro/outro duty. (Or maybe it’s for the better, depending on how you think Belushi would’ve managed the vocals.) The Blues Brothers crank the tempo up—way up:

The raw speed gives the song an excitement of its own. Intellectually, you know this band can keep up, but it’s so fast (pushing 200 bpm) that it sounds like they’re just hanging on. Making it even more frenetic, Donald Dunn doubles the guitar riff on the bass. No one else had attempted that in the earlier versions.

The Blues Brothers also end up bringing back the Sly-style organ. Instead of vocals, Ackroyd does his intro patter over leisurely organ lines that emphasize the 24-bar form against the uptempo rhythm.

Without vocals, it’s an incomplete version of the song. But surely, more people know “I Can’t Turn You Loose” from the Blues Brothers than from any other source. Not much to complain about there: The musicianship is impeccable, helmed by none other than Cropper himself. Had Redding lived to see it, he might, grudgingly, have approved.