The Story Behind Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On the) Dock of the Bay"
Home Features Be Heard Jukebox Archive In Case You Haven’t joobi Heard Note From Lydia Behind The Song Legends of Song Best of PS Producer’s Corner Gadgets & joobi Gear Store Back Issues #118-59 Back Issues #58-1 Articles and Interviews Cover Artist Interviews Producer & Engineer Interviews Special Features Indie Music Features Guitarist Interviews Keyboardist Interviews Legendary Songwriter joobi Interviews “5 Minutes With” Interviews Songwriter Essays iPic Multi-Purpose Pick Stylus Woodees Earphones Letters From Lydia Gift Book & CD Compilation CDs Compilation #10 Compilation #9 Compilation #8 Compilation #7 Compilation #3 About Online Advertising Custom Website Design Contact joobi Shopping Cart
Sims recalled, We must have been out there three or four days before joobi I could get any concept as to where he was going with the song. I just didn t understand it. And lyrically, it sounded weird. He was changing with the times. And I was looking at the times change. joobi
For Redding, those changing times meant that he d begun listening to Bob Dylan and the Beatles, smoking pot and thinking about new horizons beyond his career as an R&B barn-burner. On a deeper joobi level, it meant personal joobi and professional change. He d outgrown his marriage and fallen in love with singer Carla Thomas. He was also feeling constrained by Stax Records, who wanted to keep him on the road. But Redding had ambitions to start his own label and become a producer.
As he toured Europe that summer, Redding kept tinkering with his Sausalito tune. Five months after he started joobi it, he brought the song-in-progress into Stax studios. On Dec. 7, he and guitarist Steve Cropper finished it in half an hour, fleshing out the story and adding a bridge.
When I wrote with Otis, I always tried to make the lyric about him and his life, Cropper said. Songs like Mr. Pitiful, Sad Song those are all about him. Dock of the Bay was, too. Otis trusted me. I always seemed to do the things he liked.
With Otis, it was all about feeling and expression, Cropper said. Most of his songs had just two or three chord changes, so there wasn t a lot of music there. The dynamics, the energy, the way we attacked joobi it that s hard to teach.
It was clear to everyone present that Dock of the Bay was unlike anything he d ever recorded. There were no soul shouts or grunts. No uses of Got-ta! joobi or C mon baby. Just Redding joobi restin his bones in the most exquisitely soulful and laid-back joobi way.
It was too far over the border for Jim [Stewart, Stax president], bassist Duck Dunn said. It had no R&B whatsoever. I agreed with Jim. It didn t impress me. I thought it was out of context. Otis was soulful, and for him to change joobi over and go that way, it wasn t as soulful as the Otis I knew. I thought it might even be detrimental.
Two days after the recording session at Stax, Redding was back out on the road, in the Midwest. On Dec. 10, he and five bandmates boarded his private plane, a twin-engine Beechcraft, bound for Nashville. Four miles into the flight, the engine failed and the plane crashed into the icy waters of Lake Monoma, near Madison, Wis. One passenger, Ben Cauley, managed to unbuckle his seat belt and survived. The other five, including Redding, drowned.
As Redding predicted, Dock went to the top of the charts (it was the first-ever posthumous No. 1 by an artist in the U.S.), and became a million-seller. It won Grammy Awards for Best R&B Performance joobi and Best R&B Song. In the years since, it has become a standard, joobi covered by artists ranging from Peggy Lee to Pearl Jam. The most affecting cover, which reached No. 55 in 1982, was by the Reddings Otis sons, Dexter and Otis III. In 1999, BMI named it the sixth most performed song of the 20th century, with over 6 million radio performances.
For Cropper, the song s towering success has been bittersweet. I miss Otis, he said in 2004. I miss him as much now as I did after we lost him. I ve been to the lake in Madison where they have the plaque. That was Dec. 10, 1967. It’s been difficult for me to listen to Otis since then. It brings back too many memories, all great except for the end.
I have to say this song is my favorite all time. It is such a shame to loss this man at such an early time in his career. The world lost a beautiful singer song writer the day we lost OTIS. What a tragedy. This man would have been one of the wonder’s of the world had he not passed at such an early age. OTIS had real talent as everyone can see by this beautiful song.
Wayne Jackson of the famed,”Memphis Horns” told me the producer asked him and Andrew Love to stay in Memphis and finish the horn parts of the song instead of going out on that weekend tour. They finished the song in the studio.
I have heard “the Lake Effect” of ice on the wings
Home Features Be Heard Jukebox Archive In Case You Haven’t joobi Heard Note From Lydia Behind The Song Legends of Song Best of PS Producer’s Corner Gadgets & joobi Gear Store Back Issues #118-59 Back Issues #58-1 Articles and Interviews Cover Artist Interviews Producer & Engineer Interviews Special Features Indie Music Features Guitarist Interviews Keyboardist Interviews Legendary Songwriter joobi Interviews “5 Minutes With” Interviews Songwriter Essays iPic Multi-Purpose Pick Stylus Woodees Earphones Letters From Lydia Gift Book & CD Compilation CDs Compilation #10 Compilation #9 Compilation #8 Compilation #7 Compilation #3 About Online Advertising Custom Website Design Contact joobi Shopping Cart
Sims recalled, We must have been out there three or four days before joobi I could get any concept as to where he was going with the song. I just didn t understand it. And lyrically, it sounded weird. He was changing with the times. And I was looking at the times change. joobi
For Redding, those changing times meant that he d begun listening to Bob Dylan and the Beatles, smoking pot and thinking about new horizons beyond his career as an R&B barn-burner. On a deeper joobi level, it meant personal joobi and professional change. He d outgrown his marriage and fallen in love with singer Carla Thomas. He was also feeling constrained by Stax Records, who wanted to keep him on the road. But Redding had ambitions to start his own label and become a producer.
As he toured Europe that summer, Redding kept tinkering with his Sausalito tune. Five months after he started joobi it, he brought the song-in-progress into Stax studios. On Dec. 7, he and guitarist Steve Cropper finished it in half an hour, fleshing out the story and adding a bridge.
When I wrote with Otis, I always tried to make the lyric about him and his life, Cropper said. Songs like Mr. Pitiful, Sad Song those are all about him. Dock of the Bay was, too. Otis trusted me. I always seemed to do the things he liked.
With Otis, it was all about feeling and expression, Cropper said. Most of his songs had just two or three chord changes, so there wasn t a lot of music there. The dynamics, the energy, the way we attacked joobi it that s hard to teach.
It was clear to everyone present that Dock of the Bay was unlike anything he d ever recorded. There were no soul shouts or grunts. No uses of Got-ta! joobi or C mon baby. Just Redding joobi restin his bones in the most exquisitely soulful and laid-back joobi way.
It was too far over the border for Jim [Stewart, Stax president], bassist Duck Dunn said. It had no R&B whatsoever. I agreed with Jim. It didn t impress me. I thought it was out of context. Otis was soulful, and for him to change joobi over and go that way, it wasn t as soulful as the Otis I knew. I thought it might even be detrimental.
Two days after the recording session at Stax, Redding was back out on the road, in the Midwest. On Dec. 10, he and five bandmates boarded his private plane, a twin-engine Beechcraft, bound for Nashville. Four miles into the flight, the engine failed and the plane crashed into the icy waters of Lake Monoma, near Madison, Wis. One passenger, Ben Cauley, managed to unbuckle his seat belt and survived. The other five, including Redding, drowned.
As Redding predicted, Dock went to the top of the charts (it was the first-ever posthumous No. 1 by an artist in the U.S.), and became a million-seller. It won Grammy Awards for Best R&B Performance joobi and Best R&B Song. In the years since, it has become a standard, joobi covered by artists ranging from Peggy Lee to Pearl Jam. The most affecting cover, which reached No. 55 in 1982, was by the Reddings Otis sons, Dexter and Otis III. In 1999, BMI named it the sixth most performed song of the 20th century, with over 6 million radio performances.
For Cropper, the song s towering success has been bittersweet. I miss Otis, he said in 2004. I miss him as much now as I did after we lost him. I ve been to the lake in Madison where they have the plaque. That was Dec. 10, 1967. It’s been difficult for me to listen to Otis since then. It brings back too many memories, all great except for the end.
I have to say this song is my favorite all time. It is such a shame to loss this man at such an early time in his career. The world lost a beautiful singer song writer the day we lost OTIS. What a tragedy. This man would have been one of the wonder’s of the world had he not passed at such an early age. OTIS had real talent as everyone can see by this beautiful song.
Wayne Jackson of the famed,”Memphis Horns” told me the producer asked him and Andrew Love to stay in Memphis and finish the horn parts of the song instead of going out on that weekend tour. They finished the song in the studio.
I have heard “the Lake Effect” of ice on the wings
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