The Complete O.V. Wright on Hi Records, Vol. 1 In The Studio

By the time O.V. is released from the Texas penitentiary in 1975, he was incarcerated on a narcotics charge, his old label has been sold and his contract along with it. As Don Robey's health failed he sold everything to ABC, who were less than enthusiastic about Wright in the wake of the absence from the market. After a couple of half-hearted attempts at recording him, ABC handed Wright back his contract and he was a free agent.

His friend and collaborator Willie Mitchell was now at Hi records and riding the wave of success with both Al Green and Sil Johnson and he was more than happy to add O.V. to the stable and hoped he would propel him  to the kind of stardom that he had found with Green. I imagine he was even more motivated because by this time there was already evidence that Green was loosing it and becoming unstable.

The O.V. that came to Hi was not the man who had made those phenomenal Back Beat recordings. Drugs, alcohol and heart trouble were taking a serious toll on his body although he strove to hide it from nearly everyone. The voice was still better than anyone else and apparently at first he was still the show stopping live performer he had always been.

One story of a tour that gives you an idea of his ability to tear up a house was a tour with Tyrone Davis, Johnnie Taylor, Little Milton and O.V. The discussion on the first day centered around the performing order and since Wright was the only guy who didn't seem concerned with the subject he was asked to lead off the show. By the end of the night all three of the other guys told the promoter that O.V. would close the show for the remainder of the tour, no-one wanted to follow him ever again.

The material on this set is unquestionably good but there is a feeling of Willie Mitchell trying to shoehorn O.V. into Al Green's loafers. Green and Wright were very different but somehow Mitchell failed to alter his approach. The Hi band had fallen into a very comfortable groove and certainly by the late 70's was getting a little stale (Mitchell later acknowledged that). All that said, even flawed O.V. Wright is better than damn near anyone else so don't think for a second that this isn't worth hearing.

Health problems derailed Wright a number of times in the last 5 years of the decade, but each time he emerged from the hospital he returned to work and by 1980 he was an emaciated shadow of his former self. The last year of his life Wright returned to Gospel and was quoted as saying that he never really liked singing Soul, and had always longed to return to the Gospel fold. In November 1980 Wright collapsed while on the road and despite Roosevelt Jamisons' heroic efforts to get him to an adequate hospital, Wright died shortly after reaching the hospital, he was 41 years old.

Wright laid in an unmarked grave in Memphis for some 28 years until 2008 when a fund and concert was put together to put a proper marker on the grave on the anniversary of his death.