Singer Kept Career Alive in Japan, Europe : Music: When the popularity of the soul sound faded, Otis Clay found an audience overseas. Now, he’s finding a new audience back home.

Japan and Europe are beginning to look like twin repositories of the American musical soul. Hordes of still-vital but under-appreciated American artists representing the entire spectrum of 20th-Century music--avant classical, radio pop, blues, electronic music, hard-rock, jazz, country, R&B;, folk--are venturing in both directions for a fix of the respect and enthusiasm for their work that they no longer enjoy in their own, increasingly trend-obedient country.

Soul singer Otis Clay, who performs tonight at the Belly Up Tavern, beat a lot of those artists to the airport.

In the early ‘70s, Clay was a label-mate of Al Green at Memphis-based Hi Records, where Clay recorded the hits, “Precious Precious,” “If I Could Reach Out,” and “Trying to Live My Life Without You.” But, like many black artists for whom music was fundamentally a vehicle for personal expression, Clay awoke one day to discover that his hot ‘n’ sweaty style had been rendered passe by disco’s bloodless, depersonalized funk redux.

In a way, Clay was even somewhat misplaced at Hi, where his scorched-earth style stood in contrast to the classy sway and muffled funk of Green, the label’s star and fiscal rainmaker. In spite of his above-mentioned hits, Clay got lost in the Hi shuffle, and the sale of the label in 1977 doomed the singer to relative obscurity. But, while some displaced performers simply disappeared from sight, Clay went looking for a warm pulse.

He found it strongest in Japan, where his career was soon to get its second wind. In quick succession, beginning in 1979, Clay released four albums (two of them live recordings), in the process becoming one of the more popular performers in the Land of the Rising Sun. Ironically, impressive sales of two of the albums, “Soul Man--Live in Japan” and “The Only Way Is Up,” prompted their Stateside release. The Mississippi-born singer had returned home by way of the Orient.

Throughout the late ‘70s and ‘80s, Clay built upon his large, loyal audiences, both in Japan and on the Continent, through frequent touring in support of new recordings and well-received reissues of his American releases.

These days, the Chicago-based, 49-year-old Clay is concentrating on the home front--playing as many as 200 gigs a year in an effort not only to revive, but to sustain the soul tradition on its home soil. Driving his own van while on the road, Clay arrives here today from gigs in Dallas, Santa Fe and Phoenix. He performs with Chicago Fire, a six-piece, ‘60s-style backup band that features a horn section and two backup singers.

Those who attend tonight’s show will understand why the Japanese went cuckoo for the guy. The aptly self-described “soul survivor” remains a throwback to the Wilson Pickett-Otis Redding school of Southern-style “deep soul.” Although it was emphatically kinetic and danceable, pre-funk soul placed the highest priorities on emotion, grit and a vocal style that sacrificed cool grace and smoothness to exorcising intensity. Because it is rooted in eternal human concerns and nurtured by the real joys and woes of daily life, soul music is a genre that maintains its immediacy regardless of radio playlists and quick-profit fads.

If its commercial heyday is long gone, Clay’s brand of reality-check music is riding a wave of popularity in clubs that cater to a roots-music clientele. He should fit right in at the Belly Up.

Otis Clay and Chicago Fire perform tonight at the Belly Up Tavern, 143 South Cedros Avenue, Solana Beach. San Diego’s Joint Chiefs open the show at 9 p.m.