THE STORY OF A SONG: Otis Redding - (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay

(written by Otis Redding & Steve Cropper)

Recorded in Memphis on Dec. 7, 1967; chart debut Jan. 27. 1968 (4 weeks at #1 on Billboard chart); reached 33 in U.K.

Recorded just three days before his death in a plane crash. Dock of the Bay was not merely the Number One blockbuster hit that Otis Redding would not enjoy in his lifetime. It showed a masterful soul singer evolving to a new level as both performer and songwriter, demonstrating gifts that would likely have made him a musical giant for years thereafter.

Born in Dawson. Georgia, on September 9. 1941, Otis Redding, the son of a Baptist minister, grew up singing in church choirs after the family moved to Macon. He first recorded with Johnny Jenkins & the Pinetoppers in 1960 and emerged as an important R&B star in 1963 with his self-written ballad These Arms of Mine. But, huge as he was in the R&B market (and already with a sizable white following), Redding wanted to break through to a still wider mass market. The first opportunity came in December 1966 with a three-night stand at the Fillmore in San Francisco.

It was in the days immediately after the triumph at Monterey Pop Festival in June, 1967, that “Dock of the Bay” in embryonic form, was born. Weeks would pass following his return home before the song would fully take shape.

The first take of the song on December 7 was tentative, ending with laughter at Redding's less than adept whistling at the song's conclusion.

Otis Redding flew to Nashville for a show, then to Cleveland the next morning. The final stop on the weekend road trip was to be a show at Madison, Wisconsin. On the cold, rainy, and foggy night of December 10, the Beechcraft carrying Otis and members of the Stax group the Bar-Kays crashed in Take Monona just outside Madison. While workers were combing the lake for Redding’s body, Steve Cropper—dealing with fear and grief by doing what Otis wanted him to do, was in the Stax studio mixing Dock of the Bay. Otis had wanted the sound of seagulls crying and waves crashing for the song because that was the sound he remembered from Sausalito; that afternoon, Cropper found a sound-effects tape with just those sounds, and added them to the mix. Completing that job under the circumstances, he said, was “one of the hardest things I ever had to do”.

Though Redding’s singing “is gentle and accepting, it’s also strong and sure of itself. You can tell he’s thought deeply about the meaning of these things ... The tenderness Otis applies to his singing here is akin to the way a father’s huge, calloused hands hold a tiny baby for the first time." Dock of the Bay “is as whole, as fully realized and mature, as any record ever made".

Despite the reflective nature of the lyrics, “no one who actually hears this record can miss the joy expressed in the melody and in the singing".