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Otis Redding
Chart Position = #1 on February 1968
Otis Redding was raised in Macon, Georgia, in the shadow of his hometown heroes Little Richard and James Brown. Originally, he styled himself after Little Richard and won many amateur shows with his impersonation of the flamboyant singer. It was at one of these contests that guitarist Johnny Jenkins, a Jimi Hendrix prototype who is often overlooked, first heard Redding and hired him as his featured vocalist. Jenkins had recorded an instrumental with his band, the Pinetoppers, called “Love Twist,” which scored regionally and created a demand for a follow-up. A session was scheduled to take place at Stax Records in Memphis, and legend has it that Redding came along with Jenkins simply to share the drive from Macon. At the studio, things didn’t go well for Jenkins. The session was somewhat of a disaster, and with only a half-hour of time remaining, Redding was asked to sing a pair of songs. One of these was the slow ballad “These Arms of Mine,” and it was chosen for release simply because of the dearth of usable material recorded that day. At the time, the session was seen as uneventful, if not a complete waste, and this was only confirmed when “These Arms of Mine” took months to make a modest showing on the R&B charts. Even then, the credit for sales went to a deejay that was given 50 percent of the song’s publishing proceeds as a form of “inducement” for airplay. (Obviously, the payola scandal achieved nothing.)
From such inauspicious beginnings, Redding would develop into the very personage of southern soul and would become the centerpiece around which the Stax/Volt record label would build its image. As his individuality, confidence, and songwriting improved, Redding’s reputation and fame also built steadily, from a series of R&B hits to mass appeal within the crossover pop market. With the MG’s as his support group, Redding had a formidable live show that would intimidate anyone else who shared the bill with him. He could set an audience on fire with his supplications and powerful presence. It was his performance at the Monterey Pop Festival that broadened his audience when, against the odds, he went head to head with the leading psychedelic San Francisco bands and blew them away right in their own backyard. The “love” generation welcomed Redding unconditionally, and suddenly he was appealing to both black and white in equal measure.
Now, while he was at the pinnacle of his career, Redding decided to change his artistic direction. After listening endlessly to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album, he began to write songs that were more reflective and less traditionally soulful. Laid up for nearly two months after having polyps removed from his throat, he was concerned that the tone of his voice would be altered permanently. The doctors convinced him otherwise, but all that time without singing brought out a mellower sound in his writing that, quite frankly, gave his band and record label cause for concern. Even his manager, Phil Walden, and his wife thought Redding was cracking up the first time they heard “Dock of the Bay.” Where was the screaming? Where was the pleading? Where was the powerful ad-libbing that he was famous for? And what the heck was he doing whistling while the song faded away? Nobody got it, but Redding insisted it would be his first #1 record. Once the band finished the recording session, they were inclined to agree.
Two days later, on December 10, Redding was flying to a television appearance on the show Upbeat in a private twin-engine Beechcraft. Although commercial flights were grounded because of inclement weather, he didn’t want to miss the show. Mid-flight, things went wrong, and the aircraft plunged into the frozen water of Lake Monona outside Madison, Wisconsin. Redding, along with most of the backup band, the Bar-Kays, perished in the crash. Posthumously, Redding was proven to be correct when “Dock of the Bay” reached #1 on the national charts. His death dealt such a powerful blow to the Stax/Volt label that it never fully recovered. Although it would continue releasing hit records into the ‘70s, Stax would never again regain the magisterial aura that disappeared with the death of its flagship artist, Otis Redding.
 
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