Otis Redding
 

A soul legend. His hit "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay" is one of his most well known songs. Along with other classics like "Respect", "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", and "Try a Little Tenderness". Redding wrote many of his songs.

'Pain In My Heart'
'Ive Been Loving You Too Long'
'Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)'
'Tramp'

His cover of I Cant Get No Satisfaction is great. I have to say, Try a Little Tenderness and Sittin' On the Dock of the Bay are among my favorite songs of all time. Otis, a damn good reason for a soul forum.

Two other covers stand out as favourites of mine. 'My Girl' written by Smokey Robinson and Sam Cooke's 'Shake'.
No other artist could do justice to songs like these, other than Otis Redding.

i wonder sometimes at the paucity of soul legend threads and inteest in them on this board

i started an Aretha thread and only got 6 replies

the Otis thread is from 6 yrs ago and only 3 replies

is there some sort of prejudice/discrimination going on here?

well it is posted in the rap & hip-hop thread. No wonder it didn't get any replies.
It's in the wrong area entirely.

should the mods move it?

Well, I'd vote yes, but my opinion counts for jack **** :laughing:

Who could have possibly thought Otis belonged in the rap/hip-hop thread, I can never recall a time where he spat some bars over a phat beat.

Otis Redding like many musicians are not apperciated at all. People want to focus on phony artists. That is the truth.

Redding is one of the ultimate at Lead Vocals. You'll notice the music just accents his vocals. He had the ability to resonate pure emotion through his voice.

(I Love You) More Than Words Could Ever Say is one of my personal favorite by Otis Redding.

I never noticed this was in the wrong forum, but it's moved now.

My fave Otis song is "I've Been Loving You Too Long". His voice is so raw, not quite as smooth as most other soul singers, almost bluesy. I agree with you Necromancer, when you say the music accents his vocals.

Cigarettes & Coffee is my fave Otis track

it's just so touching

A good friend of mine who I sadly buried last fall attended the Monterrey Pop Festival in '67. He (and pretty much everyone else) was blown away by Redding's performance. I only wish I could have seen that show, I was only 16 at the time.

The sad thing is that Otis didn't see just how popular his classic (Sittin' On) "The Dock Of The Bay" would become as he was killed in that plane crash only maybe four days after that song was released. Sad.

Without a doubt "These arms of mine" my favorite Ottis song. If your a fan of that style of voice,then you should check out some Tab Benoit. Nothing Takes Place Of You - Tab Benoit (Medicine) - YouTube Just click the link..its been so long since ive posted a youtube vid I dont even remember how.

I saw the Hendrix and Redding monterey pop record at the store a while back. Really regretting not getting it, just didn't have the cash.

it's not a "remix"

Jay-Z and Kanye merely rapped over a looped sample of it

it's ok, though both have done better stuff in the past without mutilating Otis

I love Otis! His voice truly does have "soul". It is so raw and pure. You can feel the emotion pouring off of him.

My favorite songs by him would have to be either "These Arms Of Mine" or "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay". The latter song was recorded just days before he died in that plane-crash. I always found that to add to that feeling haunting of the song.

(My personal favorite of his)


Otis Redding - Sitting On The Dock of the Bay

I own 13 different Otis Redding albums and my favorite Otis song is one of his lesser know, I've Got Dreams To Remember. The song never appeared on any of his albums during his lifetime and first showed on an anthology titled The Immortal Otis Redding which was issued by Atlantic Records in 1968, a year after Otis and the Bar-Kays were killed in a plane crash.

I don't know why I like the song more than any other, except Otis' vocal seems deeply connected to the meaning of the lyrics.

I love OR and all of the soul music from that period. I wish I could have seen Itis perform.

Redding could resonate pure emotion through his vocals.

I own a 100 song 5 cd box set of Otis Redding's music plus six of his best studio albums he recorded for Stax/Volt. What was amazing about Otis' talent was he never recorded a throwaway track and he poured his heart and soul into every song he recorded.

By all reports Otis was a shy and humble man who was often unaware of the depth of his own musical talent. Early in 1963 Redding tagged along to the audition of one of his band members to audition for Stax Records in Memphis. At that time Redding was the singer for an unrecorded soul band that mostly performed for black audiences in rural Georgia. When Redding's band-mate completed his audition in the Stax studio he asked label owner Jim Stewart to record an audition song for Otis. Otis sang one of his own songs "These Arms of Mine" and halfway through the song Jim Stewart knew he had discovered the star he needed to keep his struggling record label from bankruptcy. Otis' single take audition tape of "These Arms of Mine" was so good it was included in his first album for Stax and has become a soul music classic.

Another Otis story: When Otis appeared at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, the festival's producer Lou Adler had to coax a nervous Otis Redding to go onstage. Otis was the only soul music performer at Monterey and Redding was worried that his rootsy soul music wouldn't appeal to the nearly all white audience, who were blown away by the pyrotechnics of the Who & the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Adler told Otis to calm down and just be himself and Otis turned out to be the most talked about performer at Monterey. His show stopping performance at Monterey transformed Redding into soul singer who only sold records in the all-black R&B market into a crossover artist who appealed to both black and white audiences.

There is nobody today who can hold a candle to Otis when it comes to taking you on a journey.

I like Otis, but I'm going to take it a little easy with the praising here and share some of my thoughts. I have a friend that loves Otis, and at the time he was a soul artist that I hadn't heard much from. He showed me some of his stuff and I listened a lot to it, but I never really felt connected to the music in the way that I did when I listened to Sam Cooke or Aretha Franklin.

His voice is good, but I've never really felt it on a personal level. You how sometimes you can hear great singers but never really feel a connection to it? That's the way it is for me when it comes to Otis.

He's put out some GREAT songs and written many great ones too, but I sometimes feel that the songs tend to sound a little the same a lot. I don't know if it's the production or the arrangements, but many of the "mediocre" songs sound pretty much the same.

Otis Blue is the man's "essential listening" according to many, but personally I don't see what's so good about it. There are other soul and Rn'B albums that I hold much, much higher. But lets start with the positive things. "You Don't Miss Your Water" is a great song, and Otis does one of the best versions of it you'll hear. For me, it's the best song on the album.

There are a couple of other gems here too, but mostly it's just covers of famous songs that other artists have done better. "Shake", "Wonderful World" and especially "A Change Is Gonna Come" are much weaker than the originals. But then again, the only one who actually does justice to Cooke's original of "A Change Is Gonna Come" is Aretha Franklin's version which is more of a tribute than a cover. Speaking of her, "Respect" is a song on the album which she made her own. It's miles better than Otis' original.

Another thought - what's the obsession with covering a mediocre (at best) song like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"? And that goes for Aretha too. It's a boring song, and if I ever want to listen to it, I turn on the Rolling Stones.

So can anybody enlighten me - what's the hype around Otis Blue?

Sorry if I sound negative, because I truly have respect for Otis, and I like a lot of what he's done. But he's never really been good enough in my opinion to be one of my favorites in the genre.

Ppl keep telling me I'd like Otis Redding but I'm a little wary of it. Can someone recommend me one as a starter?

A song or a whole album?

If you mean a whole album you can't go wrong with this one...

http://nuflexmag.co.uk/wp-content/up.../OtisBlue1.jpg

Thanks. Is he romantic, funk, soul, or what?

I would say half the album is ballads & half the album is fairly upbeat soul with a couple of covers thrown in.
The first time I heard it I was surprised at how uncheesy it sounded, unlike a lot of motown stuff from that time.

The Dock of the Bay I do NOT like so much. It's overplayed Americana you have w a beer...

The Dock of the Bay is a song that it's quite unlike any of Otis' other songs. I think producer/guitarist Steve Cropper selected Dock of the Bay for release on Otis' first posthumous album of original songs because the song had a quiet and introspective quality that signaled a new direction for Otis.

The singer's crisp vocals on Dock of the Bay are due in part to his recovery from throat surgery for removal of polyps from his vocal cords. In fact had Otis lived, his post surgical voice may have been closer to the smooth sound of his friend Sam Cooke.

The smoother sound of Otis' voice had a broader appeal to his growing crossover audience of white fans. Several MOR pop artists like Frank Sinatra, Sergio Mendes & Brazil '67, Englebert Humperdinck and Tom Jones rushed out to their own cover versions of Dock of the Bay, in the year following Otis Redding's death.

But Dock of the Bay was the only song that Otis was able to record using his smother polyp free vocal cords. It was recorded just three days before his death in December, 1967. The rest of the material on the posthumous Dock of the Bay album is collection of unreleased songs that date as far back as 1965 when Otis sang with his rougher pre-surgical vocal cords.

Dock of the Bay is an excellent Otis Redding album, even if you don't like the sound of his smoother post operative voice. The remaining cuts like Old Man Trouble, Don't Mess With Cupid, I Love You More than I Can Say, and Tramp (a vocal duet with Carla Thomas) are among the best sides Otis ever recorded.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v8...sredding-2.jpg
Cover of Otis Redding's The Definitive Soul Collection (2006)

The best introduction to Otis' music is The Definitive Soul Collection issued in 2006. It's a two cd anthology of 30 studio songs carefully selected by producers Lou Adler and Isaac Hayes to cover the complete span of Redding's meteoric five year recording career with Volt Records.

The Definitive Soul Collection is the only available digitally remastered Otis Redding anthology, and there's a big improvement in sound fidelity compared to the previously issued anthologies of Redding's songs. The price of the 2 cd album is an affordable $13.99 (USD) which is lower than the price of many single cd album releases.

Unfortunately, The Definitive Soul Collection is not available in the MP3 format. I haven't found any MP3 downloads of Otis Redding's music that have been digitally remastered. Atlantic Records probably won't release any remastered issues of Otis' music in the MP3 format until all of his official album releases have been remastered in the cd format.

^Thanks for the read. I got a sense of deja vu - i swear i heard about this throat surgery, etc before.
Ppl are wrong bc if I liked Otis Redding, knowing myself, i would already have a CD.
The problem is not Mr. Redding. It is the time period. Music sounded a little rough and raw in the 50s and 60s due to not yet having developed better recording equip.

It was always the emotion in Redding's voice itself, that impressed me the most. He could cry, express pain, distress, Plead, beg, etc... I would personally rank him close to #1 as one of the greatest.

But of course, not everyone has to like his style. :)

Otis singing I've Been Loving You Too Long live in London, 1967.

Amazing talent taken far too soon.

Yesterday I ordered Otis Reddings' The Complete Stax/Volt Singles Collection that was released today on Shout Factory. Found it online for a very nice price.

Here's a short review of it:

The Complete Stax/Volt Singles Collection - Otis Redding | Release Information, Reviews and Credits | AllMusic

I love everything by this man... Legendary voice!

Why is this in the wrong section? Isn't this guy a "soul " singer??????

One of my all time favorites

Otis Redding is an absolute legend!