Love Man

"Direct Me" has pop and gospel elements and a heavy tambourine-laden arrangement. On "I'm a Changed Man", Redding employed scat singing. The album's title track has a mid-tempo funk groove and lyrical references to the hippie culture that had begun to appreciate Redding at the time. The song charted at number 72 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 17 on the R&B Singles. "A Lover's Question" peaked at number 48 and number 20, respectively, and "Free Me" reached number 30 on the R&B Singles chart. "Look At That Girl", written by Randall Stewart and Edward Morris, is the wrong title, still uncorrected on album reissues. The song with this title was a single for The Fiestas in 1962 (Stewart and Morris being band members). The song on "Love Man" is "Look At The Girl", written by Otis Redding, first issued as a single, later included as such in Otis! The Definitive Otis Redding.

In a contemporary review, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice said that, although its "tender passages" are not on-par with Redding's best work, Love Man is his "best LP since Immortal." Ed Leimbacher of Rolling Stone magazine wrote that the album has "several of his very strongest performances on record" and praised the "loose imagination and tight style" of the M.G.'s backing group. Leimbacher hailed Redding as a "musical genius" and called "Direct Me" "one of the best Memphis soul cuts of all time".

In a review upon its 1992 reissue, Ira Robbins of Entertainment Weekly said that Love Man has "substantial songs soaked in instrumental spirit and topped off with Redding's emotion-packed vocals." Q magazine wrote that it "showcases Redding at his up-tempo frantic and frenetic best". By contrast, Allmusic's Mark Deming felt that the album is "flawed" because of material that is weaker than his previous albums, even though it has "Redding's indefatigable energy and conviction as a vocalist and the ever-indomitable groove of Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, Jr., and the other members of the Stax Records studio crew." Matthew Greenwald of Allmusic said that, apart from "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay", the album's title track was "one of Otis Redding's finest and most commercial sides that he cut at the end of his brief career."

Credits adapted from Allmusic.

• Otis Redding - vocals
• Booker T. Jones, Isaac Hayes - keyboards, organ, piano
• Steve Cropper - guitar, producer
• Donald Dunn - bass guitar
• Al Jackson Jr. - drums
• Wayne Jackson - trumpet
• Andrew Love, Joe Arnold - tenor saxophone

Reissue

• Ron Capone and Jim Stewart - engineer
• Paul C. Acree Jr. - cover photo
• Loring Eutemey - design
• Yves Beauvais - producer
• Steve Cropper - producer, remixing
• Tom Dowd - remixing
• Dan Hersch - remixing
• Bill Inglot - remixing