Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p.131) - Ranked #147 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time" - "DREAMS offers the full spectrum, from hard-driving soul stomps such as 'I Can't Turn You Loose' to heartache ballads including 'I've Been Loving You Too Long'..."
Personnel includes: Otis Redding (vocals, guitar); Carla Thomas (vocals); Booker T. Jones (guitar, piano, organ); Steve Cropper (guitar, piano, bass); Johnny Jenkins (guitar); Charles "Packy" Axton, Andrew Love, Joe Arnold, Gilbert Caples, Gene Parker, Tommie Lee Williams (tenor saxophone); Floyd Newman (baritone saxophone); Wayne Jackson, Sammie Coleman, Gene "Bowlegs" Miller, Ben Cauley (trumpet); Isaac Hayes (piano, organ); Lewis Steinberg, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Wayne Cochran (bass); Al Jackson Jr, Rick Hall (drums); Phil Walden (tambourine); William Bell, David Porter (background vocals); The Pinetoppers.
Producers include: Jim Stewart, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson Jr, Nesuhi Ertegun, Lou Adler.
Compilation producers: Gary Stewart, David Gorman, Bill Inglot.
Recorded in Macon, Georgia, Muscle Shoals, Alabama and at Stax Studios, Memphis, Tennessee between 1960 and 1967. Tracks 20-24 on disc two recorded live at The Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey, California on June 17, 1967. Includes liner notes by James Austin and Bill Dahl.
Digitally remastered by Bill Inglot & Dan Hersch.
If you're not prepared to shell out the big bucks for Rhino's earlier four-CD OTIS! box set, this sensibly put together two-disc set may be all the Otis you need at a more reasonable price. Everything of note is here, including an early Pinetoppers track recorded when Redding was a Little Richard wannabe, and then all the hits from 1963's "These Arms of Mine" to the posthumous 1967 "Dock of the Bay." You also get two terrific duets with Carla Thomas, including the extremely down-home "Tramp," and five cuts from the Monterey Pop Festival, with Redding, backed by Booker T. and the MGs, laying the assembled hippies out in the aisles.