November 2024
Peter Guralnick’s essential book on Southern soul, Sweet Soul Music (1986), begins with a long rumination on, among other things, what defines the music. After giving some background on his reasons for writing the book and the research it required, he wrote: “I suppose I should make it clear from the outset that when I speak of soul music, I am not referring to Motown, a phenomenon almost exactly contemporaneous, but appealing far more to a pop, white, and industry-slanted kind of audience.
“What I am referring to,” Guralnick continued, “is the far less controlled, gospel-based, emotion-baring kind of music that grew up in the wake of the success of Ray Charles about 1954 on and came to its full flowering, along with Motown, in the early 1960s.” A 1991 CD compilation of Charles’s recordings on Atlantic Records gets it right with its title, The Birth of Soul, but plenty of other singers, including Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson, helped form what became soul music in the ’60s.
I agree with Guralnick’s broad outlines of what constitutes soul music, but I also think the best Southern-soul records had a basic, uncluttered sound that tied them solidly to their blues influences and made them feel, somehow, rural. Charles’s recordings have a level of sophistication—a hint of jazz here and there, even in his interpretations of country music—that gives them a slightly urban feel.
Cooke and Wilson recorded music that had a pop undercurrent running through it, although both ventured into full-on soul music when they had the chance. Cooke’s gospel recordings with the Soul Stirrers are deeply emotional and simply arranged, and Night Beat (1963) offers us Cooke singing blues and soul without the lush production that made his pop recordings accessible to a wider audience. Wilson sang many songs that, despite their production excesses, are soul music of the highest order.
Southern soul took a lot of its power from another source. Little Richard was an architect of rock’n’roll, but he also had a tremendous influence on Southern soul. When Otis Redding had a chance opportunity to audition at a recording session for another musician, he sang a rave-up tune patterned after Richard, one of his heroes. The other song he sang was a ballad that showed some of the things he had learned from his other main influence, Cooke.
For a while in the 1960s, Redding was the greatest singer in soul music. He could sing a ballad with the finesse and beauty of Cooke, but he often brought grit and fierce conviction to a song in the manner of Richard. He was a distinctive songwriter and a dynamic stage presence whose appeal led to some success in pop music, but his biggest chart impact was on R&B.
Otis Redding Jr. was born in Dawson, Georgia, on September 9, 1941, to Otis Redding Sr. and Fannie Roseman. Redding was their fourth child and their first son. In the next few years, they would have two more children. Redding’s father was a sharecropper, and his mother took care of their large family. Around the time Redding turned one, America was fully engaged in WWII and his father got a job at Warner Robins Air Force Base, 18 miles from Macon, Georgia.
As a federal employee, Redding’s father was able to move his family to Tindall Heights, a federal housing project in Macon. Roseman was a devout Christian and wanted her family to be active in a local church. She chose Vineville Baptist Church, where her children attended Sunday school and sang in the choir. Redding was in grade school when he joined the choir, and soon started playing the drums and piano.
Around that same time, according to Jonathan Gould’s Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life (2017), Redding also began singing with some kids who lived in the same housing project. “Several days a week,” Gould wrote, “they would meet after school to rehearse in the resonant space between two of the apartment blocks. Otis and Bill [Jones] shared the leads, Floyd [Jones] sang baritone, and Eddie [Ross], to the extent possible for a prepubescent boy, handled the bass.”
As was the case for many kids in the South, Redding grew up around music. “The Reddings owned both a phonograph and a radio, and Macon had four local stations,” Gould notes. Redding Jr. listened to a lot of country music on the radio, and heard African American musicians, such as Louis Jordan, on jukeboxes.
In 1950, doctors told Redding Sr. that he had tuberculosis. His health fluctuated, but he worked as much and as often as he could. Redding’s mother also worked to help out financially, but things were tough for the large family, and Redding left school at 15. “For a while he worked as a well digger,” Guralnick wrote in Sweet Soul Music. “For an even briefer period he was a filling station attendant, but always his mind was on music.”
Redding was still singing gospel music with his friends, but by the time he left school in 1956, Little Richard, who also came from Macon, was massively popular. Redding became more and more interested in Richard and other rock’n’roll singers, such as Fats Domino. He also became confident enough to perform at a talent show that was held each Sunday at the Hillview Springs Social Club. Gladys Williams ran the talent show and led its five-piece band.
One Sunday, Redding took the stage during the talent show, with Williams and her band behind him. According to Gould’s book, Redding “launched into a headlong rendition of Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally,’ only to lose his way a few bars into the song—a miscue that earned him some strong words of admonishment from Miss Gladys about the importance of singing in time and in tune.”
A few months later, in early 1957, Redding had carefully rehearsed another Richard hit, “Heebie-Jeebies,” and sang it at Hillview Springs. He knew the tune cold. “I won the talent show for fifteen Sunday nights straight with that song,” Redding told Hit Parader magazine in 1967. “And then they wouldn’t let me sing anymore, wouldn’t let me win that five dollars anymore. That inspired me.”
Around the time Redding was creating a sensation at Hillview Springs, Cooke was moving into the pop charts after a successful career in gospel music with the Soul Stirrers. Cooke would soon become an influence on Redding, but Richard was still his prime example and inspiration. Richard himself, however, had decided to leave rock’n’roll for the ministry and gospel music in 1957.
Richard’s band, the Upsetters, soldiered on, playing clubs in Georgia and Florida. The band’s road manager heard about Redding’s performances at Hillside Springs and arranged for him to take Richard’s place on a few occasions. “Though the details are sketchy,” Gould wrote, “they were fronted at some of these gigs by sixteen-year-old Otis Redding.” According to both Guralnick and Gould, Redding was left stranded in Florida by the Upsetters and had to ask his parents to wire him money to get home.
Redding’s first significant break grew out of another talent show win in 1958. Hamp Swain was a popular Macon disc jockey who had helped break James Brown’s single “Please, Please, Please” two years earlier. He hosted Teenage Party, a Saturday-morning talent show on WIBB radio, which drew large enough crowds for its live audience that it moved into the city’s Douglass Theater. The first few times Redding appeared on Teenage Party, he used his own musicians rather than the house band.
Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music says guitarist Johnny Jenkins was in the audience at Teenage Party when he heard Redding’s performance on the show. Gould’s Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life asserts that Jenkins was in the house band. Both describe Jenkins as confident and flamboyant. Jenkins told Guralnick he wasn’t impressed with Redding’s backing band: “So I went up to him, and I said, ‘Do you mind if I play behind you?’ And he looked at me like, ‘Who are you?’ ’Cause he didn’t know me. And I said, ‘I can make you sound good.’”
Redding dominated the Teenage Party talent show, winning week after week, singing songs by Little Richard and Chuck Berry, who by then was hitting the charts regularly. Jenkins was the guitarist with Pat T. Cake and the Mighty Panthers, and by late 1958 had brought Redding into the band as lead vocalist. The group played clubs and bars, but some of their best-paying gigs were at fraternity parties.
Pat T. Cake and the Mighty Panthers played a frat party during the winter of 1959 at Mercer College—now Mercer University—a private school in Macon. The student who booked them was Phil Walden, who had hired them to play a dance at his high school the previous year. Walden was a middle-class White Southerner who had developed a passion for R&B, and while in college had begun booking and managing R&B acts. He had likely heard Redding on Teenage Party.
In the spring of 1959, Jenkins left the Mighty Panthers to form his own group, the Pinetoppers, taking Redding with him. Walden was impressed by Jenkins’s stage presence, which owed much of its excitement and impact to Little Richard’s influence, and handled bookings for the band. An enormous fan of Richard, Walden told Guralnick about a time he saw the singer walking down the street in Macon. “I was scared to even address him,” Walden remembered. “I was in awe of him, but I said, ‘Tutti Fruiti’ and he said ‘Oh rooty.’ God!”
Jenkins was not a singer or songwriter and fronted the band solely as the lead guitarist. He was left-handed and played the guitar flipped upside down, high strings at the top, in the manner of blues guitarist Albert King. Walden thought he had a star on his hands. “I was convinced he could have been the greatest thing in rock’n’roll,” he told a reporter from the Macon Telegraph in 1996. “He had all the earmarks of stardom. He looked the part, he played the part, he acted the part.”
A few months after Redding joined the Pinetoppers, he began his first steady relationship. Zelma Atwood was about a year younger than Redding and, like him, a high-school dropout. She saw him perform at the Teenage Party shows and his first attempts at flirting went nowhere. Soon, however, they began dating, and it became serious. By early 1960, Atwood was pregnant.
Redding’s initial reaction to the prospect of parenthood did not inspire confidence. He moved to Los Angeles to live with an uncle and try his luck at show business there. He met and worked with local musicians and made some demo tapes. A young man named James McEachin managed Redding briefly and was able to arrange a recording session for him during the summer of 1960. By that time, Sam Cooke was a regular on the singles charts. The musicians who backed Redding on his earliest known session included Earl Palmer and René Hall, who had played on recordings by both Little Richard and Cooke.
Gould describes the session in his Redding bio: “Two months shy of his nineteenth birthday, Otis is supported, not by the usual collection of bar band amateurs, but by one of the most accomplished studio bands in the world.” The backup singers are the Blossoms, led by Darlene Love. Redding is confident, his voice is strong, and he is rhythmically solid, even taking opportunities to play with phrasing and timing.
Trans World Records released one of the songs from the session, “She’s All Right,” as a single. The B-side was “Tuff Enuff,” a duet with another singer, Jackie Avery. It didn’t chart, and by the end of August, Redding had taken the bus back to Macon. McEachin would go on to have a notable career as an actor in television and film.
Redding rejoined the Pinetoppers when he returned to Macon. Walden had opened an office to establish himself as a booking agent. When Walden met Redding, he thought of him as the singer in Jenkins’s band. He and Redding would soon form a strong friendship and business association, but at first it was up to Redding to convince Walden that he had potential. When Redding returned from California, Walden could plausibly promote him as an established recording artist. Redding’s single didn’t chart, but it did get a mention in Billboard.
Atwood gave birth to a son soon after Redding returned to Georgia. They named the boy Dexter, and Redding bought Atwood an engagement ring. She was still living with her mother, who took care of the baby when Atwood went back to work. Redding was once again performing with the Pinetoppers, who were back to playing at college fraternities.
Walden discovered he had a friend in Redding in January 1961, when he was unable to pay the tuition for his next semester at Mercer. Walden’s father, who didn’t approve of his association with African American musicians, refused to help him. When Redding heard of his plight, he collected money from other musicians for Walden, even though Walden, in his worst financial straits, was in better shape and a more secure social position than the artists he represented. Redding thought enough of him, both as a person and as someone who could further his career, that he helped him out.
Jenkins was still the star of the Pinetoppers, however, and Walden considered that he was the group’s primary attraction when he booked the band. In the spring of 1961, Walden arranged for the group to do a recording for Tifco Records, a small Georgia label. The point of the recording was to highlight Jenkins’s skills as a guitarist. Redding did not sing on the record. The Pinetoppers recorded two songs, “Miss Thing” and “Pinetop.”
In July, Atwood told Redding she was pregnant with their second child, and they married the following month at Vineville Baptist Church. Zelma Redding shared her husband’s confidence in his talent, but she encouraged him to supplement his meager earnings with something more reliable. Redding drifted into a series of jobs as he waited for his singing career to take off. The newly married couple moved into Zelma’s grandmother’s apartment and Dexter stayed with Zelma’s parents.
Tifco changed the title of “Miss Thing” to take advantage of the dance craze created by Chubby Checker’s single “The Twist,” a cover of a Hank Ballard and the Midnighters hit on the R&B charts. Tifco released “Love Twist,” with “Pinetop” as the B-side, in November 1961. The song received enough regional airplay that the label ordered three pressing runs of 1000 discs each by the end of the year.
In February 1962, Walden received a call from Joe Galkin, an Atlanta-based record-company promotions man. Galkin’s family had settled in Macon, Georgia, after leaving Russia when Galkin was two. He dropped out of high school, left Macon to play trumpet in New York City, and established himself there as a manager for various bands. By the mid-1950s, he had moved to Atlanta as a freelance record promoter.
Galkin told Walden that he had bought the rights to “Love Twist.” His plan was to generate enough interest in the single to have it picked up by Atlantic Records. Galkin was friends with Jerry Wexler, a partner at Atlantic, and the label agreed to distribute “Love Twist” nationally. For Walden, the association with Galkin was a career boost. For Redding, it was a mixed blessing, because the single was an instrumental.
Redding turned to Bobby Smith, a car dealer and budding record-company owner, whose office was in the same building as Walden’s. Smith set up a recording date for Redding and quickly brought in the backing band that worked with Wayne Cochran, another singer on his prospective label. Redding sang “Shout Bamalama,” another of his Little Richard knockoffs. The song is a scalding piece of rock’n’roll, with Cochran’s band keeping a firm grip on the fast-moving, intensely hard-driven track.
Redding recorded two other songs at the session, including another of his songs, “Fat Gal.” Smith released “Shout Bamalama” as a single, with “Fat Gal” on the B-side, on his unfortunately named Confederate Records. The band is less distinctive than the one Redding worked with in Los Angeles, but the conviction and confidence of his performance carry the record, and the band makes up in spirit what it lacks in distinction.
Galkin didn’t think “Shout Bamalama” was a good record, but he was beginning to see that Redding might have a chance at reaching a larger audience. He was still convinced that Jenkins could also have a shot at fame, and got in touch with his friends at Atlantic Records, who had formed a distribution deal with Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee. Galkin had successfully promoted some recent Atlantic singles and convinced Wexler to let Jenkins record at Stax, with the label’s house band backing him. Stax had placed several hits in the top 40, including “Green Onions,” a monster hit in the summer of 1962 by Booker T. & the MGs.
Stax was only a few years old in 1962. Jim Stewart, a young banker and part-time country fiddler, had started a record company called Satellite Records in Memphis five years earlier. In 1958, Estelle Axton, Stewart’s sister, convinced her husband to mortgage their house so her brother could expand his label.
Stewart bought recording equipment and converted an old theater into a recording studio. Stewart’s first recordings were of country music and rockabilly, but one of his producers, Chips Moman, persuaded him to move into R&B. Satellite released an R&B single by the Veltones in 1959 that was picked up for distribution by Mercury Records, but the label was still focusing on country music when Stewart met Rufus Thomas, a local disc jockey. Thomas had written a song he wanted to record as a duet with his daughter, Carla. “Cause I Love You” became a regional hit in the fall of 1960 and caught the attention of Atlantic Records, which signed a distribution deal with Satellite.
Atlantic released Satellite’s recordings under its own labels, Atlantic and Atco, and Carla Thomas scored a hit in 1961 with “Gee Whiz” when Atlantic picked it up for distribution. That same year, Satellite signed The Royal Spades, a group of White R&B enthusiasts. Axton convinced them to change their name to the Mar-Keys, and Satellite released an instrumental, “Last Nite,” that hit #3 on the charts and ended up selling a million copies.
For whatever reason, Atlantic decided to distribute “Last Nite” under Stewart’s Satellite label, and a Los Angeles label of the same name threatened a lawsuit. Stewart and Axton took the first two letters of their last names and their label became Stax Records. Three members of the Mar-Keys—guitarist Steve Cropper, trumpeter Wayne Jackson, and saxophonist Floyd Newman—would become key members of the Stax house band.
Jenkins didn’t like to drive, so Galkin asked Redding to drive the guitarist to Memphis in August 1962 for the session he had scheduled at Stax. Galkin had convinced Atlantic to pay for the recording. He was going to be in the studio with Jenkins and hoped to wrangle a chance for Redding to do a demo. The drive from Macon took five hours, and Jenkins and Redding were met at Stax by Stewart, Galkin, and the members of Booker T. & the MGs, who would be backing Jenkins.
Redding began to unpack the gear they had brought with them, but Cropper told him the studio had its own microphones and stands. He and the rest of the MGs assumed Redding was Jenkins’s valet. After setting up in the studio, the musicians went through a few of Jenkins’s instrumentals. Stewart wasn’t hearing anything in the material, and after a few hours told Galkin he couldn’t make a record with Jenkins.
The musicians started to pack up, but Galkin reminded Stewart that Atlantic had paid for the session and that some time remained. He suggested that they record Redding. Booker T. Jones had gone home, but the remaining musicians, including Jenkins, ran through “Hey Hey Baby,” yet another of Redding’s Little Richard–inspired tunes. When Stewart said he wasn’t looking for another Little Richard, Galkin suggested that Redding sing a ballad the singer had written.
“The Discovery Myth is one of the most appealing stories that pop culture has to tell,” Gould wrote in his Redding biography. Some people who were in the studio that day remember that Redding made an immediate impression when he sang “These Arms of Mine.” Gerri Hirshey’s Nowhere to Run (1984) quotes Cropper’s memories of that moment: “Otis opened his mouth,” he told Hirshey, “and everybody went ‘Waaaaaaaaaa. This guy is just oozing with it.’”
According to Gould’s book, Stewart didn’t see it that way. “No one was particularly impressed,” Stewart told an interviewer. “It was different, but I don’t think anyone jumped up and down.” Stewart recalled it in a similar way when he talked to Guralnick: “I was too tired, too bummed out, or whatever—I was just, you know, who cares? I mean, it would be just as easy for me to say now that I knew we had a monster.” Galkin, however, was impressed; he prevailed upon Stewart to sign Redding and give Galkin a split of anything Stax received from Redding’s recording.
In the same way that Elvis Presley’s recording of “That’s All Right” or James Brown’s “Please, Please, Please” became crystalizing moments, Redding became the singer who would dominate the R&B charts and define a genre of music for the next several years on the day he committed “These Arms of Mine” to tape. There are no session records to tell us how many takes Redding and the band played, but the arrangement is simple enough to believe they nailed it on the first try. Cropper played piano in Jones’s absence, and Jenkins handled the guitar chores, with Lewie Steinberg on bass and Al Jackson Jr. on drums.
“These Arms of Mine” was in many ways the template for the Redding recordings that would follow. The band is solidly in the pocket but plays in unfussy support of Redding. Jackson and Steinberg give the song a solid foundation and Cropper’s simple triads on the piano give it all the form it needs. Jenkins is effective on guitar, playing arpeggios alongside Cropper’s piano during the verses and switching to single-note, middle-register trills during the chorus. The band sets the singer up and then gets out of his way.
Redding responds with his first truly distinctive performance in a recording studio. There are no nods to Little Richard, and while Redding’s emotional restraint might show some Sam Cooke influence, it’s hard to hear Cooke in his phrasing or timing. It’s a defining performance that brings together the skills Redding had developed in several years of performing: skills that let him step forward with his own voice.
The song also became a blueprint for the many recordings that would come out of Stax throughout the years it was associated with Atlantic Records. Although Carla Thomas gave Stax its first hit, her voice lent itself more to pop than R&B, and her father’s singing had a humorous, novelty quality that limited his hit potential. Stax didn’t know it yet, but that chance recording in August 1962 would change the label’s direction and create a strain of R&B that would rival Motown for chart dominance. Atlantic Records would itself begin to send its artists to record at Stax and other studios in the South.
Now that Redding was with Stax, Walden presented him with a management contract. Galkin got in touch with Bobby Smith and bought out Redding’s recording contract with Confederate Records. In October 1962, Stax released “These Arms of Mine,” with “Hey Hey Baby” on the B-side, on its Volt Records subsidiary. WIBB, where Redding had won the Teenage Party contests, put the single in heavy rotation. Stations in Nashville and Atlanta also gave the record airplay.
In establishing Volt Records, Stax was following standard industry practice. Labels often started subsidiary labels to avoid the impression that they were flooding the market with product, which could open them up to charges of payola. Stax was overseeing Redding’s recording career but releasing his records on Volt.
Redding did some touring in the South after putting together a band, since Jenkins refused to feature him in Pinetoppers shows. In March 1963, “These Arms of Mine” landed on the #20 spot on the Billboard R&B charts and Galkin convinced Atlantic to distribute fresh copies of the single to deejays. A second resurgence brought the single to #85 on the pop charts. Total sales of 100,000 convinced Stewart that it was a good idea to get Redding back into the studio.
Redding recorded “That’s What My Heart Needs,” his own tune, and a humorous retake of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” that he called “Mary’s Little Lamb.” Stewart had him record two other tracks for possible later release. The Stax band again backed Redding, and Jenkins contributed some guitar lines. It would be Jenkins’s last time in a recording studio until 1970. “That’s What My Heart Needs” topped out at number 27 on the R&B charts but did better than other Stax/Volt singles released about the same time. The label hadn’t had a big hit since “Green Onions.”
Redding was writing his own songs, but his guitar skills were limited; he played with an open-E tuning, which restricted him to a narrow harmonic palette. In addition, being a high-school dropout made him self-conscious about his vocabulary. However, he knew that writing his own songs would yield royalty checks and more financial security. In September 1963, he brought a song into the studio that was an adaptation of “Ruler of My Heart,” an Allen Toussaint song that Irma Thomas had recorded.
When Stewart heard “Pain in My Heart,” he knew Galkin had been right to convince him to sign Redding. “After about probably the third single, I really began to understand what Otis was about, how special he was,” he told Carol Cooper, who wrote liner notes for Otis!: The Definitive Otis Redding, a four-CD compilation that Rhino Records released in 1993. Volt released the single in late October, and it sold briskly, even managing to hit #61 on the pop charts.
Toussaint noticed the similarities to his song and demanded credit and royalties. After the single’s initial release, Toussaint was listed as the songwriter of “Pain in My Heart” under the pseudonym Naomi Neville. Toussaint was glad to get paid for his song, and Stax and Atlantic were both pleased that Redding had a chart success. Atlantic had arranged for a group of its acts to appear in New York at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in November, and added Redding and Rufus Thomas, who had had a hit for Stax with “Walking the Dog,” to the bill.
Redding’s emotional power and sensitivity appealed to audiences at the Apollo, but he hadn’t yet perfected his stage act. “He didn’t know how to move in those days,” Wexler told Guralnick. He was appearing at shows that featured Solomon Burke and Ben E. King, who knew how to work a crowd. Redding continued to perform at other venues through the end of the year, refining his skills at capturing an audience’s attention.
Atlantic urged Stax to get Redding into the studio to record enough songs to release an album, and in January 1964, he and the Stax session group recorded seven tracks. Pain in My Heart was released two months later on Atlantic’s Atco subsidiary label. The album consisted of Redding’s three singles and their B-sides, except for “Mary’s Little Lamb,” and the tracks from the January session.
Even though the seven additional tracks came from a rushed session, the album plays to Redding’s strengths. “That’s What My Heart Needs,” and “These Arms of Mine,” along with a cover of Cooke’s “You Send Me,” show his touch with medium-tempo ballads. R&B chestnuts, including “I Need Your Lovin’” and “Stand by Me” demonstrate his ability to bring something new to well-established tunes, and “Lucille” lets him rip into something by his beloved Little Richard.
“You Send Me” and “Stand by Me” could easily have ended up being filler, but Redding’s approach to them is at once a tribute and a largely successful attempt to put his own stamp on the standards. The arrangements also go their own way. The horns and guitar fills on both tracks give them a deeper blues flavor than the originals. Redding’s style isn’t in full flower on Pain in My Heart, but it’s well on the way.
A version of Richard Berry’s “Louie Louie” doesn’t come off, but it’s not really Redding’s fault. The Stax session band can’t seem to get the arrangement moving. That is the rare song on which the band would falter in the studio with Redding. On the remainder of Pain in My Heart, and on nearly every other recording Redding would make with the band, it would provide intelligent, elegant accompaniment that framed his voice perfectly.
The core of the Stax studio band would become Booker T. & the MGs—Booker T. Jones on keys, Steve Cropper on guitar, Donald “Duck” Dunn on bass guitar, and Al Jackson Jr. on drums. That lineup was usually augmented by Floyd Newman and Wayne Jackson on horns. Other musicians would rotate on sessions as Redding’s popularity grew and Stax signed other acts. In addition, Wexler started sending other soul singers south to record at Stax. Instrumentals recorded by the MGs appeared under their own name and the expanded studio group became known as the Mar-Keys, although in time the name would apply only to the Stax horn section.
Pain in My Heart hit shops in March 1964, and Atco released “Security,” a track from the album, as a single a month later. Redding soon embarked on a 30-day tour with other soul acts, including James Brown and Solomon Burke, and he spent the time watching how they held an audience. Seeing the control Brown had over his own band and the impact that had on the singer’s performance gave Redding the idea of hiring a strong touring band.
Redding continued to tour off and on through the rest of the year, which strengthened both his vocal technique and his stage show. He went into the studio in September to sing a song he had cowritten, “Chained and Bound,” and the experience he had gained on the road shows in his command of his voice. He sings with reserve in the opening lines of each verse but leans into more force and passion as his pleas of love grow. The song hit #6 on the R&B charts.
In December, Cropper suggested that Redding record “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” a song by Roosevelt Jamison that singer O.V. Wright had recorded. Redding cut some of the verses and changed the dynamics of the song, giving the verses an understated lyricism but adding a slight edge to his voice during the chorus. Cropper’s guitar fills mesh with Jones’s simple piano triads to cradle Redding’s singing, and a horn arrangement filters in subtly during the chorus.
Redding and Cropper collaborated on their first song that same month. They had become friends almost as soon as Redding joined Stax/Volt, and Redding’s singing had a strong effect on Cropper. “Otis Redding did more to change my sound than anybody,” he told Guitar Player in 1978. “He made me think and play a lot simpler, so that the notes would really count dynamically. The stuff I did with Otis [had] a distinctive tone and style that I didn’t play with anyone else.”
Cropper suggested he and Redding write a song based on a name a local deejay had given Redding: “Mr. Pitiful,” because his songs begged for romance. Cropper and Redding quickly put a lyric to the song, and they recorded it as the B-side for “That’s How Strong My Love Is.” The tune moves at a fast pace, with Jackson’s snare and kick drum helping Cropper’s scratching rhythm guitar to carry Redding aloft with help from Dunn’s flowing bass lines.
Volt released the single and deejays played both sides. “That’s How Strong My Love Is” reached #18 on the R&B, but barely reached the top 100 in the pop charts. “Mr. Pitiful,” on the other hand, made #10 in R&B and fell just short of hitting the top-40 pop charts. Redding was in the studio again in January to record a follow-up LP to Pain in My Heart. Like Redding’s debut, The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads consisted of recent singles and their B-sides, along with eight additional tunes to create an LP-length release. It appeared on Volt Records, with Atlantic distributing, in March 1965.
True to its title, most of the tracks on the album are slow or medium-tempo. Nearly half the songs were Redding’s interpretations of tunes others had recorded. A cover of the Jackie Wilson hit “A Woman, a Lover, a Friend” is a strong blues track, and Redding’s take on Chuck Willis’s “It’s Too Late” also brings out its blues strain. The arrangement for “Home in Your Heart,” a B-side for Solomon Burke, is taken at a faster tempo, which lets Redding put his own spin on the tune and avoid too close a comparison with Burke’s powerful original release.
The Stax band was in the recording studio every day, working with a growing roster of singers, and it was razor-sharp. Cropper’s powerfully rendered guitar lines work with Packy Axton’s sax to bring the right amount of grease to “A Woman, a Lover, a Friend.” The horn section adds a warm, subdued backing to a version of Sam Cooke’s “Nothing Can Change This Love,” a grittier version of the song that Cooke might have done if he’d had the chance. Jackson propels and swings the music throughout with his ringing snare drum.
The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads was a step forward in establishing Redding on the R&B album charts, reaching #3. When he wasn’t in the studio, Redding was on the road building his following and gaining more confidence as a performer. Walden got him bookings in colleges in addition to the clubs that were part of the R&B and blues circuit.
The quality of Redding’s recordings impressed Wexler at Atlantic, who had heard about the inventiveness and efficiency of Stax’s studio from Atlantic’s chief engineer, Tom Dowd. While repairing equipment at Stax, Dowd had witnessed how quickly the studio musicians could put together an arrangement and have a song on tape. Wexler kept that information in mind when he signed Sam & Dave, Wilson Pickett, and others. By 1965, he would be sending them to record in Memphis or at the Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, which had a similarly talented studio band.
Redding was performing at a show with singer Jerry Butler shortly after Volt released The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads, and Butler showed him a song he had begun but hadn’t finished. Redding added a verse and sketched out a horn arrangement for the song and went into the studio in April to record “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” Redding’s command and control of his voice had grown considerably since his early recordings.
He sings the opening line calmly but with a hint of longing, as Jones plays a piano arpeggio behind him:
I’ve been loving you for too long to stop now
Dunn, Jackson, and the horn section enter as the song picks up momentum, and Redding’s voice rises in the first part of the next line:
You are tired and you want to be free
He holds the note on the word tired, elongating it and letting his voice gain more force, then pulls back, the band following his lead. He finishes the verse more calmly, trying to control his feelings, but barely. The second verse follows a similar pattern, but the closing changes key as Redding sings imploringly:
Please don’t stop now
I love you with all of my heart
The band fills in behind him, creating a backdrop for Redding’s outpouring of emotion.
“I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” demonstrates how much Redding had learned since his first recordings with Stax. He could still summon power and grit when he needed them, but he had learned how to caress a melody, and how to hold back to create drama and tell a story. The Stax band also shows increasing sophistication and skill.
Volt released the recording as “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (to Stop Now)” in April with “I’m Depending on You,” recorded at the same session, as the B-side. It was Redding’s highest charting single at that point, at #2 on the R&B charts, #21 in pop. In July, Redding and the band spent two days in the studio recording his third album. Volt released Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul in September. Isaac Hayes, whom Stax had recently hired to fill in on sessions when Jones was at Indiana University studying music, makes his first appearance on a Redding LP.
The album came to be best known simply as Otis Blue, and contains three Redding songs. “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (to Stop Now)” was credited to Redding and Butler, but “Ole Man Trouble” and “Respect” were Redding’s. “Respect” was Redding at his gruffest, barking out his demands to his wife or lover. As the song closes, though, Redding seems to be invoking the goals of the civil rights movement:
Respect is what I want!
Respect is what I need!
I gotta gotta have it!
Just give me some respect!
The band chugs behind Redding, with Jackson hitting the snare drum so hard he’s in danger of cutting through the drum head. “Respect” performed well on the charts when Volt released it as a single, but Aretha Franklin recorded the song two years later and made it an even bigger hit worldwide.
“Ole Man Trouble” features a nuanced, deeply felt vocal from Redding and biting, edgy rhythm guitar from Cropper. The remaining tracks on Otis Blue are covers: three of them originally by Cooke, who had died only seven months before Redding recorded them. Redding recasts “Shake” and “Wonderful World” and he makes the songs his own without taking them away from Cooke, although his version of “Shake” is tougher and harder-hitting.
The surprise on the album is “Satisfaction,” a version of the tune that was a hit for the Rolling Stones around the time Redding recorded it. Redding claimed not to have heard the original, but the Stones certainly knew his work. They had recorded “Pain in My Heart” on The Rolling Stones No. 2 and “That’s How Strong My Love Is” on Out of Our Heads, the album that included “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in the US. That song will always belong to the Stones, but Redding breathes his own kind of fire into it.
Redding’s interpretation of “A Change Is Gonna Come” is well intentioned and sincere but doesn’t quite reach the majesty and depth of Cooke’s performance of the song. The rest of the tunes on Otis Blue hit their marks. B.B. King’s “Rock Me Baby” gives Cropper a chance to show off on guitar, and Redding’s take on songs by Solomon Burke and Smokey Robinson help make Otis Blue his strongest album so far, and perhaps the best LP of his career.
Redding went back on the road a week after the Otis Blue sessions. Volt released “Respect” in mid-August, and it charted well. When the label released Otis Blue in September, Atlantic threw its promotional muscle behind the album to capitalize on its two hit singles. Redding headlined at the Apollo that same month. “You could see his confidence grow in the way he tilted his head,” Walden said in an interview for the film Shake! Otis at Monterey. “He knew he was a star and he carried that pride in his walk.”
In November, Redding had a short gap in his touring schedule and went into the studio to record two songs. Volt released “Just One More Day” with “I Can’t Turn You Loose” as the B-side. The label probably thought “Just One More Day” would be the hit because of its similar tempo to “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” Instead, it was “I Can’t Turn You Loose” that caught on.
“I Can’t Turn You Loose” cops its opening riff from the bass line on the Four Tops’ “I Can’t Help Myself,” modifies it a bit, and gives it to Cropper to set the song up. Jackson’s drum roll brings in the horns, playing a bright, energetic intro. Cropper’s insistent guitar riffs blend with Jackson’s drums to drive Redding’s vocals along. Jackson is so powerful that he coaxes a great, determined performance from the singer, but he doesn’t run over him or get in his way.
During the next few months, Redding appeared on American television shows and continued his grueling touring schedule. In March 1966, he went into the studio to record his next album, and Volt released The Soul Album the following month. The album did not have a hit single to drive sales, but it did well, proof of Redding’s growing popularity. It was his now standard formula of original songs and covers of tunes that had been hits for other singers.
Redding, Cropper, and McElvoy Robinson, the leader of Redding’s touring band, wrote “Just One More Day,” which likely would have been a hit had Volt released it as a single. A version of Cooke’s “Chain Gang” is harder-edged and more evocative than the original, and “Treat Her Right” injects a jolt of blues into Roy Head’s terrific hit from a year earlier. “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” and “Scratch My Back” are prime examples of Redding’s mastery of the blues.
Redding was consistently making LPs that held together, with no filler, in a market that was moving from singles to albums, especially among White listeners. Walden and Atlantic Records thought that getting Redding and other soul acts on the label’s roster into a prominent West Coast club would expand their audience. Wexler also thought that recording the singers live would yield something useful.
Redding, Percy Sledge, and Sam & Dave appeared onstage at the Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles around the time Volt released The Soul Album. Redding was in good form and his appearance over four nights made a splash with the audience at the Whisky, which normally came to the club to hear rock bands. Ry Cooder was in the opening band, the Rising Sons, and told the Los Angeles Times in a 2010 article about Redding that the singer “was unbelievable. . . . He’d get up, stomp his foot, wave his arm, grab a microphone, and sing with such searing intensity, I thought, this man’s going to have a heart attack. This was a real traveling R&B show, the likes of which I had never seen.”
Redding played more shows in California before stops in the Southwest, the South, and a few days at a club in Detroit, where Motown artists came out to hear him. Along the way he dropped by Stax to record a single, “My Lover’s Prayer,” which Volt released in May 1966. In September, Redding was in Memphis to record his fifth album, just before leaving for a tour of England and France. Redding had a strong following in England and when he appeared on the television show Ready Steady Go!, he was joined on one song by two of his biggest British fans, singers Chris Farlowe and Eric Burdon.
Volt released the ungainly titled Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul in October 1966. Redding wrote or cowrote seven of the album’s tracks, the largest number of self-penned songs to appear on his albums thus far. “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song),” a collaboration with Cropper, opens the album. The song pokes a bit of fun at Redding’s tendency to sing sad ballads, but also emphasizes that his music “puts you in a groove / and when you sing this song / it’ll make your whole body move.” The scat singing in the chorus is based on Redding’s method of creating the horn arrangements of his songs by singing them to the musicians.
“Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song),” “I’m Sick Y’All,” “Sweet Loreen,” and “She Put the Hurt on Me” were fine examples of Redding’s skill at writing soul-music potboilers. Any of them could probably have been hits, and Volt released “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)” as a single in early September, before the album’s release. It reached #12 on the R&B charts. “My Lover’s Prayer,” the single from a few months earlier, was a fine ballad that didn’t break any new ground for Redding but hit #10. Both made the 20s on the pop charts.
Redding’s biggest hit from the album, and one of the songs that came to define him, was an old ballad that an American pianist and two English lyricists wrote in the early 1930s. Many singers have covered “Try a Little Tenderness” over the years, including Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, and Cooke did a version on his live album Sam Cooke at the Copa. Isaac Hayes wrote a horn intro for Redding’s take on the song, giving it an elegance that Redding picks up when he sings the opening lines, with Cropper behind him, accompanied by Jones on organ and Hayes on piano.
The two keyboards give the arrangement a gospel feel, and Redding’s vocals have a stronger sense of desperation than any other singer, even Cooke, ever summoned. He respects the melody, but when he sings “Young girls they do get wearied / Wearing that same old shaggy dress,” he conveys a feeling of sadness, even a hint of shame that he can’t afford to give his lover something nice. The song was written during the Great Depression, and—30 years later—Redding got to the core of its message.
Tenor saxophonist Gil Caple plays a line at the end of the first verse that pulls the song briefly into jazz. Jackson begins lightly cross-sticking the snare to pull the arrangement into 4/4, which signals a more fluid and forceful bass line from Dunn. Cropper plays arpeggios alongside Jones and Hayes, who are understated, supporting Redding’s powerful exhortations. Jones’s Hammond B-3 adds some organ swells that signal a more rhythmically forceful, almost bossa nova—style guitar from Cropper.
The horns filter in as Redding’s singing intensifies and the rest of the band picks up the rhythmic pace, with Jackson playing a snare roll that leads to forceful strikes on the snare to maintain the beat. The band drives harder as Redding admonishes: “Squeeze her / Don’t tease her / Never leave her /
Get to her, try, try / Just try a little tenderness.” Redding repeats the message, modifying the lyrics slightly, both imploring and encouraging anyone who is listening.
In the song’s final moments, Redding is almost barking orders as the band—forceful, insistent, driving, and all the while sleek and precise—stays close behind him. “Gotta try, nah, nah, nah, try / Try a little tenderness / You’ve gotta to know what to do, man / Take this advice,” Redding sings as the song fades to a close.
“Try a Little Tenderness” is Redding’s finest performance, and the pinnacle of the Stax band’s ability to provide exactly what he needed to reach transcendence. Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul was another strong album from the singer. Redding could take a seemingly tired song like “Tennessee Waltz” and make it fresh again, finding meaning that others had missed. Redding sings “Day Tripper” with so much bite it nearly outshines the Beatles’ original, and “Hawg for You” reminds his fans that Redding was, at heart, a blues man.
Ed Ward and Jon Landau wrote articles about Redding in Crawdaddy, a sign of Redding’s growing popularity with White record buyers. Another was an appearance at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium. In the Fillmore’s early days, promoter Bill Graham frequently asked musicians which acts he should bring in. “Everybody said, ‘This is the guy,’” Graham wrote in Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out (1992). “[Otis Redding] was it for everybody that talked to me.” Graham booked the singer for three nights and among the people in the well-attended shows were local musicians.
Singer Carla Thomas had scored an early hit for Stax, but her appearances on the charts were sporadic and in the lower reaches in the years that followed. In the summer of 1966, she finally had a hit with “B-A-B-Y,” which did well in the R&B and pop charts. Stewart got an idea to put Redding and Thomas together for an album of duets, following the example Marvin Gaye had set with Kim Weston and Mary Wells.
In January 1967, Redding and Thomas recorded King & Queen, which Stax released in March. The first single from the album, “Tramp,” had been a recent hit for blues singer Lowell Fulson. In the Redding/Thomas version, the verses are spoken back-and-forth: Thomas opens with “Tramp!” and Redding responds with “What you call me?” Redding confidently sings the chorus: “Tell you one thing: I’m a lover.” The band vamps behind the two singers during a lighthearted, hilarious romp that sold briskly.
Thomas’s girlish, softer-toned voice provided a contrast to Redding’s tougher delivery, and the selections played to those differences while frequently highlighting how unexpectedly well the singers blended. “Knock on Wood,” a surprise hit for Stax singer Eddie Floyd, stands up well with the original, and “It Takes Two” is a nod to Gaye and Weston, whose recent hit with the song was one of the reasons Stewart got the idea to bring Redding and Thomas together. While hardly an essential Redding album, King & Queen is light and entertaining.
Redding returned to the road, ducking into the studio when he had space in his schedule. In March 1967, Redding and other performers from Stax embarked on a second tour of England and France, which Dowd would record for future releases. The MGs and the Stax horns would back the singers, as well as being featured in the shows. Gould wrote: “In live performance, this sleek, seven-piece ensemble showed itself to be nothing less than the best soul band in the world.”
Volt released Otis Redding Live in Europe in July 1967. With a runtime of just over half an hour, the album presents Redding as audiences heard him on the tour. The band is in strong form, eliciting a powerhouse performance from the singer. Redding’s inclusion of “Satisfaction” and “Day Tripper” made sense because he had recently covered the tunes, but it must also have pleased the European audiences. The fast tunes are very fast, but the three ballads, including the closer, “Try a Little Tenderness,” give the album pace and show Redding’s versatility. The album could have been recorded better, but it succeeds as an example of Redding’s power onstage.
Redding had enjoyed playing with the MGs and the Stax horn group while in Europe and wanted them to be his touring band. They were too much in demand in the studio, but Stax had signed the Bar-Kays, a group with a similar lineup that had scored a hit for the label in 1967 with the instrumental “Soul Finger.” Redding heard the group in a Memphis club and offered them the chance to tour with him. Several of the Bar-Kays were still in high school, but when they graduated in June, they were able to hit the road with Redding.
That same month, Redding appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival, a three-day affair that attracted close to 200,000 people. Walden suggested that Redding should use the MGs and the Mar-Keys as his backing band for show. The Stax musicians were clean-cut and wore suits, in contrast to the other musicians, who appeared at Monterey dressed like the young people attending the festival. Redding didn’t know how the rock crowd of White hippies would respond.
Wexler, who accompanied Walden, was also concerned that Redding was outside his comfort zone, especially when the rock band that preceded him, Jefferson Airplane, performed a powerful set. Wexler had advised Walden to book Redding for the show, but was beginning to think it was a bad fit. The MGs and Mar-Keys took the stage after midnight, and their matching lime-green suits and close-cropped hair made for an odd sight. Wexler began to calm down when the Monterey audience began dancing to the group and applauding heartily.
Tommy Smothers introduced Redding, who came out to perform a short set because of the late start. According to Gould, the five-tune set Redding did “may have been, song for song and note for note, the greatest performance of his career.” A view of his appearance in the film Monterey Pop supports Gould’s assertion. Redding was a high point in an event that effectively jumpstarted the careers of other performers at the festival, including Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and Janis Joplin.
Redding’s nonstop touring schedule was beginning to wear on him, and he decided to buy a small plane so he could get to gigs more quickly and spend less time traveling. He bought a Beechcraft Model 18, which could transport up to seven people, and hired a pilot. Constant performing didn’t allow Redding’s voice to rest, and he was having enough discomfort that he consulted a doctor. He had developed polyps on his vocal cords and had surgery in October 1967 to remove them.
The doctor told Redding to let his voice rest after the surgery. In mid-November, Redding began to sing again and felt comfortable enough to think about recording. He called Cropper and asked him to listen to a song he had been working on. Redding had been impressed by the increasing sophistication of pop music and soul and was eager to move in a new direction. Thus far, his lyrics were often straightforward and simple, a means to his expressive ends rather than something meaningful on their own.
The song Redding wanted Cropper to hear had an acoustic guitar accompaniment and was more personal than songs he had written up to then. He had the lyrics sketched out, and Cropper filled them in with facts he knew about Redding’s life. The idea for “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” came from a stay in the Bay Area. When Redding had performed in San Francisco just after the Monterey festival, promoter Bill Graham had allowed Redding to use his houseboat.
Redding spent a lot of time in the studio in the weeks after his recovery from surgery. “His voice was so clear, we just couldn’t get over it,” Cropper told an interviewer for the Smithsonian’s rock and soul history project in the 1990s. “We just couldn’t record enough.” Redding had ideas for songs, which he had developed during his recuperation. While some sessions involved the Stax band, Cropper and Redding spent the evenings recording songs they hoped to flesh out later. “All told, in addition to ‘The Dock of the Bay,’ they cut around a dozen new tracks,” wrote Gould. “Most were medium- to up-tempo songs with markedly stronger, wittier, sexier lyrics than Otis’s previous work.”
In early December, Redding did two shows to see if his voice was strong enough for live performances. A week later, on December 8, Redding and the Bar-Kays played a fraternity dance at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, followed the next evening by a show in Cleveland, Ohio. He and the group flew to both gigs in his plane. They taped a performance for a local TV station in Cleveland and played a show at a local club.
On Sunday, December 10, Redding and the Bar-Kays gathered at the airport for a morning flight on the Beech 18 that would take them to their next show, in Madison, Wisconsin. It was raining in Cleveland. The flight took two hours and 15 minutes, and as they approached Madison, the pilot got word that visibility was poor. He switched to autopilot to guide the plane through dense cloud cover. The airport is north of Lake Monona and the pilot radioed for permission to land.
He lowered the landing gear and the engine stopped, causing the plane to descend quickly. The plane had iced up in the low temperatures, and it plummeted into the lake in ten seconds. By the time rescuers arrived, the plane had sunk. One member of the Bar-Kays, trumpet player Ben Cauley, had removed his seat belt and grabbed a seat cushion, which enabled him to float. Redding, the remaining Bar-Kays, and the pilot died in the icy waters.
Zelma Redding received a phone call informing her that her husband had died. Booker T. & the MGs were playing a gig in Indiana when they heard about Redding’s death, and Walden, Stewart, and Wexler were devastated when they heard the news. Divers recovered Redding’s body on Monday, December 11, and it was flown to Macon the next day.
On Monday, December 18, Redding’s funeral was held at Macon’s City Auditorium. About 4500 mourners were crowded into the building, and thousands more were outside. Many of the singer’s contemporaries, including James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke, and Percy Sledge attended. Wexler gave the eulogy, his voice breaking. Redding was buried at the Big O Ranch, a 300-acre property north of Macon, which he had purchased a year earlier.
Stax released “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” on January 8, 1968. It was Redding’s first #1 on the pop charts in the US and was a hit worldwide. When Stewart heard the song for the first time, before Redding’s death, he didn’t want to release it. “It was just too far over the border for Jim,” Dunn told Guralnick. “There was no R&B in it whatsoever, according to what Stax was.” Dunn and others agreed at the time, but Cropper, who had a hand in its creation, never doubted its greatness.
“(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” opens with the sound of ocean waves, with Dunn’s bass and Cropper’s lightly strummed acoustic guitar. Redding’s voice is more reserved than usual, and clear. Jones’s piano borders on jazz, and Jackson’s drums are solid and swinging. Cropper injects some rich, R&B-style intervals and trills on the high notes throughout. Redding’s voice rises in the bridge, where horns fill out the arrangement. The song closes with Redding whistling a melody over the band accompaniment.
The song does have a more laid-back sound than Redding’s previous work for Stax—more laid-back than anything the label had done. Redding sings with great feeling, but his voice doesn’t push to its usual intensity. During the bridge, he seems to anticipate some resistance to a change in musical direction:
Look like nothing’s gonna change
Everything still remains the same
I can’t do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I’ll remain the same, yes
As he was recovering from his surgery, Redding was telling people, including his wife, that he hoped to expand his reach musically. The closing line in “The Dock of the Bay” seems intended to reassure his fans and, perhaps, himself that his sincerity and honesty would not change.
It’s possible that “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” was a hit because people were shocked and saddened by Redding’s death. It is an undeniably great song, the fulfillment of the singer’s promise as a songwriter, and a signal of even greater things to come. Stax put together an album for release in February 1968. The Dock of the Bay included the single and three previously unreleased tracks. The remaining songs had been released earlier as singles or had appeared on other Redding albums. It avoids being a cash-in because it is a good overview of Redding’s talents. Like the single, it sold very well.
The second posthumous Redding album appeared in June on the Atlantic’s Atco Records subsidiary rather than on Volt. Most of the tracks came from the sessions Redding did in the weeks before he died. It stands with Redding’s best records. The ballads, such as “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” and “Thousand Miles Away” are as rich and engaging as any he had done, but his voice is more flexible and elastic. The harder soul tracks are tough, but, again, his singing is clearer and more expressive. “Hard to Handle,” one of his best-known songs, made its first appearance on The Immortal Otis Redding.
Atco released In Person at the Whisky a Go Go in October 1968—a much cleaner recording than Live in Europe. It helps complete the picture of Redding’s onstage power. Two more Redding studio albums, Love Man (1969) and Tell the Truth (1970), were composed of later recordings. Both studio albums have good moments and show the Stax band in fine form, but it’s likely that Redding would have recut and refined some of the performances that were done to get song ideas down on tape.
Stax Records would itself change in the years after Redding died. Rufus Thomas continued to record for Stax, and singers Johnnie Taylor and William Bell had hits for the label. Bell recorded “Tribute to a King” in honor of Redding. It was heartfelt and sold well. Booker T. & the MGs, blues singer Albert King, and Sam & Dave kept the label going, although Sam & Dave’s recordings appeared on Atlantic. The studio became popular enough that Atlantic started sending Wilson Pickett and others to Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals. Aretha Franklin recorded her breakthrough singles and albums there.
A few months before Redding died, the partners at Atlantic Records sold the company to Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. Wexler and brothers Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun would still run the company. An option in Stax’s contract with Atlantic allowed the label to look for another distributor. Stax hoped to negotiate a deal with Warner, but wasn’t pleased with the offer. The contract also stipulated that Atlantic owned the rights to all the Stax recordings made during the years of the association with Atlantic.
Stax ended up selling to Gulf + Western and rebuilt its catalog from scratch under Al Bell, who had been hired to handle promotions in 1965. With the label’s older catalog in another corporation’s hands, Stax signed new artists, including the Staple Singers, the Emotions, and the Dramatics. Isaac Hayes went from playing sessions, writing songs, and arranging for the label to making his own records and having big hits.
The records Stax released during the late ’60s and early ’70s were often outstanding examples of soul music, but they had a more urban and slickly produced feel than the music from Stax’s first wave in the ’60s. Bell bought out Stewart in 1972 and made a distribution deal with Columbia Records. By 1975, Stax was in bankruptcy, and a holdings company sold the label and its post-1968 assets to Fantasy Records, which still owns them.
By then, Southern soul was no longer a chart success. Wilson Pickett’s sales had slowed down by the time he left Atlantic for RCA Records in 1971. Sam & Dave, whose records appeared on Atlantic but were recorded and produced at Stax, were also seeing declining sales. By the early ’70s, they were no longer on Atlantic.
For much of the ’70s, Al Green, with the support of producer Willie Mitchell, kept Memphis soul music on the airwaves and on the charts. Green’s albums and singles for Hi Records were a reminder that blues- and gospel-based soul could still grab the attention of record buyers. The triumph was short-lived. By the late ’70s, disco and Philadelphia soul, itself often disco-influenced, dominated popular music, perhaps in a way that even Southern soul couldn’t match. That’s another story.
Phil Walden, Redding’s friend and manager, went on to manage the Allman Brothers Band and establish Capricorn Records, distributed first by Atlantic, then by Warner Brothers. He even gave Johnny Jenkins a shot at fame with Ton-Ton Macoute! in 1970. Walden also managed actors Jim Varney and Billy Bob Thornton. He died of cancer in 2003.
Malaco Records and Daptone Records help keep the soul flame burning. Like the blues, Southern soul has its devotees, but it doesn’t sell. Its triumph in the ’60s was largely because of Redding, whose records brought Stax and Southern soul to the world. He defined a style of singing and music in much the same way Frank Sinatra did. He set a standard that other singers, even one as headstrong as Wilson Pickett, followed. Redding made the most consistent run of soul albums in the ’60s.
When he died, at the age of 26, Otis Redding had just started hitting his stride.
. . . Joseph Taylor
josepht@soundstagenetwork.com
