A 1965 album cut in a single 24-hour session in Memphis, including three songs by the recently murdered Sam Cooke (1965)
Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul — widely regarded as the finest southern soul album.
Popular music · Soul, funk & R&B
Otis Redding
1941–1967 · American
Southern soul; Stax Records, Memphis
Otis Redding was the defining voice of Memphis southern soul, a rougher, hornier sound than Detroit's Motown, recorded at Stax with Booker T. and the M.G.'s behind him. He died in a plane crash at 26, three days after recording the reflective ballad that became the first posthumous number one in American chart history.
How to spot them
- ▸Stax Records in Memphis, distributed by Atlantic; Booker T. and the M.G.'s as house band, Steve Cropper on guitar
- ▸Gruff, straining delivery with improvised interjections — 'got-ta, got-ta' — and a horn section punching the offbeats
- ▸Nicknames the King of Soul, the Big O and the Mad Man from Macon
- ▸The 1967 Stax/Volt European revue and the Monterey Pop Festival
- ▸Died at 26 in a plane crash into a Wisconsin lake
Songs & albums
A 1965 ballad co-written with Jerry Butler, a slow plea against being abandoned after years of devotion (1965)
'I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)'.
A 1965 song he wrote demanding fair treatment when he gets home, which a Detroit singer rewrote into a feminist anthem (1965)
'Respect' — Aretha Franklin's 1967 version, he said, took the song away from him.
A 1966 reworking of a Rolling Stones hit, taken faster and handed to a horn section (1966)
'(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction', from Otis Blue.
A 1966 reinvention of a 1932 standard that begins as a whisper and ends in a horn-driven frenzy (1966)
'Try a Little Tenderness' — his most famous live closer.
His June 1967 festival set in California, introduced to what he called 'the love crowd' (1967)
Monterey Pop — it won him the white rock audience months before his death.
A song written with Steve Cropper and recorded three days before his death, with whistling in place of an unfinished verse (1968)
'(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay' — the first posthumous number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Dawson, Georgia, in 1941 and raised in Macon, where he won the local talent show so often that he was barred from entering
- •He arrived at Stax as a driver for Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers and recorded 'These Arms of Mine' at the end of their session
- •In 1967 Melody Maker readers voted him the world's best male vocalist, ending Elvis Presley's ten-year run at the top of the poll
- •He wrote 'Respect' in 1965; Aretha Franklin's rearrangement two years later became far better known
- •His twin-engine Beechcraft crashed into Lake Monona near Madison, Wisconsin, on 10 December 1967; he was 26
- •Four members of his backing band the Bar-Kays died with him; trumpeter Ben Cauley was the only survivor of the crash
- •'(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay' topped the US chart in March 1968 and won two Grammys the following year
- •He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, inducted by Little Richard, a fellow Macon native
Drill it — 8 cards
1 / 8new card
Sources
- Otis Redding — Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
- Jonathan Gould — Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life