He was eighteen when he wrote a song about a letter that arrived with the whole universe packed inside it, and the song was so strange and so beautiful that the world needed six years and a horn section to figure out what to do with it. Shuggie Otis never chased the world. He made the music, and he let it wait.

"Hello, my love, I heard a kiss from you Red magic satin playing near, too"

-- from Strawberry Letter 23

He was born in Los Angeles in 1953, the son of Johnny Otis, the Greek American bandleader who helped carry rhythm and blues through the postwar years, and Phyllis Walker, who called the boy Shuggie, short for sugar, before he could walk. He picked up a guitar as a toddler and was playing onstage with his father's revue before he was a teenager. At fifteen he was in the studio with Frank Zappa, adding guitar to Hot Rats. Epic signed him while he was still a boy, and the label never quite knew what to do with what he made.

Freedom Flight (1971) carried Strawberry Letter 23, a song built from rainbows, cherry clouds, and a melody that floated like smoke. Five years later the Brothers Johnson covered it and rode it to number five on the pop chart, and that is the closest his songwriting ever came to the machinery of fame. Inspiration Information took him three years to finish, one man playing nearly every instrument, a record that sounded like soul dreaming out loud. It sold modestly, and he walked away from the industry in the late seventies, becoming a rumor with a cult following.

In 2001, David Byrne's Luaka Bop label reissued Inspiration Information as a World Psychedelic Classic, and a new generation finally heard what the boy had been hearing all along.

He was born in Los Angeles in 1953, the son of Johnny Otis, the Greek American bandleader who helped carry rhythm and blues through the postwar years, and Phyllis Walker, who called the boy Shuggie, short for sugar, before he could walk. He picked up a guitar as a toddler and was playing onstage with his father's revue before he was a teenager. At fifteen he was in the studio with Frank Zappa, adding guitar to Hot Rats. Epic signed him while he was still a boy, and the label never quite knew what to do with what he made.

Freedom Flight (1971) carried Strawberry Letter 23, a song built from rainbows, cherry clouds, and a melody that floated like smoke. Five years later the Brothers Johnson covered it and rode it to number five on the pop chart, and that is the closest his songwriting ever came to the machinery of fame. Inspiration Information took him three years to finish, one man playing nearly every instrument, a record that sounded like soul dreaming out loud. It sold modestly, and he walked away from the industry in the late seventies, becoming a rumor with a cult following. In 2001, David Byrne's Luaka Bop label reissued Inspiration Information as a World Psychedelic Classic, and a new generation finally heard what the boy had been hearing all along.

He never needed the machinery. He proved that one imagination, patient and unhurried, can make music the future has to catch up to. The letter arrived on time. The rest of us just took a while to open it.