Cropper added some lyrics and knocked it into shape. He knew he had something, and as soon as he returned to Memphis, he called Steve Cropper, Booker T & The MGs’ guitarist and Otis’ regular writing partner, telling him: “I’ve got a hit.” Otis would normally chill out after a flight, but his excitement took him straight to Stax’s studio to work on the song. Inspired by the boats coming into Waldo Point and Richardson Bay, Otis wrote the first verse of a mellow and gentle new tune, but it needed work. Satisfied with his weekend’s work, Otis headed north to chill on a houseboat in Sausalito, where he started writing a song that would prove a bittersweet high point of his career. His performance was a revelation to California’s flower children – among them Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix – bringing them a taste of true soul. He was socking it to Europe through spring on the Stax-Volt European tour, before heading home to play US dates – including Monterey Pop, where Otis closed Saturday night’s show. His duet album with Carla Thomas, King & Queen, released in March 1967, became his highest-charting US album so far. The question was: did he have a song that would thrill both his burgeoning new audience and his keep-the-faith soul fans? “I’ve got a hit”
He was on the verge of a breakthrough no soul artist had achieved and was about to become a rock star without compromising one iota of his integrity.
#SITTING ON THE DOCK OF THE BAY OTIS REDDING MOD#
Didn’t he blow away the crowd at Monterey Pop, the most important festival in the world, pre-Woodstock? Like the mod kids in the UK a couple of years earlier, the hippie crowd found Otis’ authenticity and life force irresistible. Throughout 1967, Otis was making inroads among the hippie audience, who appreciated that this suit-wearing, ball-busting performer was bringing no-holds-barred soul power to them. He had scored a string of Top 30 pop hits in the US, and the second of his two 1965 albums, Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul, went Top 10 in the UK and was regarded as a classic among critics who did not normally consider soul music a serious art form. Otis Redding was the heartbeat of Stax Records, the Memphis label famed for bringing Southern soul to the wider world.
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