Pioneering rhythm-and-blues singer, songwriter, drummer, bandleader and disc jockey Johnny Otis made the kind of conscious life choice early on that few people have the inclination, or enabling circumstance, to carry out.
Born white, the son of Greek immigrant parents, and raised in a predominantly black neighborhood in Northern California in the 1920s, Otis decided as a youth that he’d rather be black.
Otis died Tuesday in the Los Angeles area, where he had lived for much of his life, said Tom Reed, a black-music historian. He was 90.
He was born John Veliotes on Dec. 28, 1921, in Vallejo, northeast of San Francisco, and was raised in Berkeley, where his father ran a grocery store in a largely black community.
He started playing drums with big bands and jazz combos, and in his early 20s came to L.A. to join Harlan Leonard’s Kansas City Rockers, the house band at Club Alabam on the thriving Central Avenue jazz – blues – R&B club scene.
Otis scored a signature hit of that nascent style in 1946 with the moody, saxophone-driven instrumental “Harlem Nocturne,” which was revived in 1960 by the white New Jersey rock group the Viscounts.
He wrote the song that became James’ first charting hit — vaulting her to No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1955 — titled “The Wallflower,” popularly known as “Roll With Me Henry.” It was a female-centric response to Ballard’s sexually charged hit “Work With Me Annie” that raised eyebrows for its frankness.
Then he came up with a variant on Bo Diddley’s signature 1955 hit “Bo Diddley” using the same five-count “shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits!” beat and created a smash of his own in “Willie and the Hand Jive.” It’s been recorded dozens of times by a wide variety of musicians, most notably by Eric Clapton in 1974.
Otis wrote other R&B hits, including “So Fine,” “Double Crossing Blues” and “All Nite Long,” and produced early recordings for Little Richard, Big Mama Thornton and Johnny Ace.
Otis and his wife of 60 years, Phyllis, had several children and grandchildren.
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