Strawberry Letter 23

Recorded in 1971 for Freedom Flight, with Johnny Otis producing and Shuggie Otis handling the performance and arrangement duties across the album sessions. The record also featured contributions from players such as George Duke and Aynsley Dunbar. The track was the centerpiece of Freedom Flight and became the song most associated with Shuggie Otis’s early-1970s breakthrough. Its dreamy, open-ended groove helped define the album’s reputation as a cult classic. The song became a major hit when The Brothers Johnson covered it in 1977, and that version later kept the composition in circulation across funk, soul, and pop audiences. Shuggie Otis’s original remains a reference point for later covers and samples.