Kind of an odd gem. This act was put together by Chess Records in 1967 as part of an effort to expand from their classic blues catalog into psychedelia, and features, floating ethereally in the background, a pre-fame Minnie Riperton (later known best for "Loving You") adding coloratura from the top of her 5-octave range, as well as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, not quite slumming it with some of the better pop orchestrations I've heard from that period. Distorted organ, fuzztone guitar, harpsichords, and sitars, you know the drill.
Mostly creative psychedelic covers of well-known songs, this album succeeds where a lot of similar efforts failed, by virtue of the overall talent of the people involved, and the imaginativeness they weren't afraid to embrace. I never would have guessed that Sam and Dave's "Soul Man" could work as an shaggy psychedelic chamber-rock freakout, but they pull it off, along with pretty much a full album's worth a lot of similar surprises. I wouldn't say it's great, but it's a fun listen, and a small step above what you might expect from this sort of fare. Somebody involved with this album knew a little more about music than most of the people who did this kind of stuff.
Incidentally, most of these same players backed Muddy Waters on "Electric Mud" and Howlin' Wolf on "The Howlin' Wolf Album", the blues legends' respective forays into acid rock. Supposedly Hendrix used to listen to Waters's "Herbert Harper's Free Press News" from that album to get revved up before going on stage, so we may have a lot of classic bootlegs to thank these guys for. "Rotary Connection" is in a more AM-radio-friendly "flower power" gear than "get Jimi ready to rock" overdrive but the psychedelic bonafides are there.
