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By C. Bottomley
Otis Redding would have been 60 on September 9, and it's tempting to imagine what might have happened to him if he hadn't died in a plane crash at the age of 26. In the wake of that 1967 disaster, "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" went to No. 1. Interestingly, it was the first song Otis didn't deliver as if it were his last, as if he realized that time was catching up with the tune's wandering protagonist, and that it was his alone to waste.
Would this classic single have heralded a breakthrough or a collapse for the then king of Southern soul? Maybe Redding's fate would have been that of Ron Isley, doomed to play second fiddle to young soul buck R. Kelly on this summer's hit "Contagious." Perhaps Redding would have become an elder statesman, producing and writing for proteges as he did with Arthur Conley's "Sweet Soul Music." Or maybe he'd have been forced to the margins, left to prove to Las Vegas audiences that he's still got it, perspiration pouring off him as he belts out the umpteenth update of "I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)."
I'm wondering because nobody makes music like Otis Redding anymore. Perhaps nobody could. Backed by Booker T. & the MG's and sharing a supernatural rapport with the band's drummer, Al Jackson, Redding made recordings that were pin-sharp in their twists and turns, but throbbing with emotion punched in by the Memphis Horns and wrested from Steve Cropper's guitar. Listen to an album like 1966's Otis Blue and you have a record as sweated over as any production of that year, including the Beatles' Revolver.
Although Redding and frequent co-writer Cropper grew up on the ferocious exultations of James Brown and Little Richard, their songs dug a deeper seam of operatic drama. From the start, Redding was all volcanic climax. In his first recording session, a 1962 date for Stax, Redding cut a couple of his own tunes - "Hey Hey Baby" and "These Arms of Mine." The first was an unremarkable shouter that impressed no one. The second, a ballad, had but a moment to assert itself before Redding swept it away with his eruptive approach. Within the first four syllables, his voice builds to an agonized pitch: "These arms of mine/ They are longing…" He can't finish the sentiment. He passed the audition.
Otis suffered. So much so that one fan, upon meeting him, asked, "How can you stand being Otis Redding?" His music translated that pain into emotional terms just as deeply as his voice did. Listen to how the horns fortify his pain after the brief intro to "I've Been Loving You Too Long," the musical equivalent of opening a movie with an earthquake. Or turn up the remarkable fade on "Just One More Day," in which the horns endlessly wail a four-note salute to their leader's torment. Otis misses his baby, and, if only for an instant, the brass section won't let him forget the bliss he and his arms once enjoyed.
Redding met his wife, Zelma, in Macon, Ga., in 1959, before he first headed out west to seek a recording deal, and ended up working in a car wash. The couple stayed together until the end, which makes you wonder how the singer maintained so much longing and passion. His lyrics often crave love's permanence, even while the temporary reality tortured him: "I've Been Loving You Too Long" is the obvious example. It's here he cries, "My love is growing stronger as our affair grows old." The snapshot "Cigarettes and Coffee" finds him breaking the casual spell to declare, "I've been so satisfied/ Honey since I met you." The bonds of love are taken even more seriously in "Chained and Bound." By the end of the song's debut on Recorded Live, Redding's shackles are the source of sweet masochistic pleasure. No wonder the women screamed for him. Few men can articulate their feelings so bluntly.
As a lyricist, Otis spoke plainly, letting his voice load his words with desperation. His topics and lyrics had mundane origins. "Mr. Pitiful" played with the name given to him by a Memphis DJ. Al Jackson's acknowledgement that his hard-touring boss "needed a little respect" when he got home inspired Redding's song - which Aretha Franklin turned back around on him. Redding was wary of metaphysics. He introduced his cover of Smokey Robinson's then 3-year-old "My Girl" with a quip about "going back to the old days." Evidently he was somewhat befuddled at how a woman can be sunshine, the month of May, and honey rather than someone enfolded in his arms - as if such junk were strictly for the poets. As the album title Complete and Unbelievable … The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul implied, he was more about defining the heart of the matter than dressing it up in rhetoric.
Which isn't to say that Redding couldn't be a nimble wit. He revels in the nuttiness of shaking "like a bowl of soup" in his version of Sam Cooke's "Shake!" The self-mocking "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)" is filled with those nonsense syllables, and he expects us to sing right along with him. One of his biggest hits was "Tramp," the marvelous spat with Carla Thomas in which the high school dropout-turned-ranch owner responds to his partner's taunt of "Otis, you're straight from the Georgia woods" with an extremely satisfied "That's good!"
The dilemma of the soulman is often situated between God and the bedroom, but Redding created his timeless music by bringing together what he felt with what he thought. Otis Blue expresses both sides of his character. Side one finds him immersed in the torture of love and the wider world of the black struggle, complaining about "Ole Man Trouble" but also singing Sam Cooke's anthem "A Change Is Gonna Come." Side two is a "state of the soul address" that claims B.B. King's "Rock Me Baby" and the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" for his people. Redding's music observed no color bar or boundaries. And his take on "Day Tripper" rocks harder than the Beatles'.
Redding's generosity of spirit - his yearning for acceptance by both his woman and his audience, his refusal to discount music just because it wasn't called "soul" - is perhaps the most overlooked aspect of his legacy. He is a man for all seasons. But in our playlisted world, Redding sits at the back of the oldies station when in fact he's still capable of engaging in a dialogue with the present. The syncopation shared by Redding and Booker T. & the MG's is as jaw-dropping as a Destiny's Child record; "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" could teach Staind lessons in existential misery; and I'm still waiting for poetry-slam grads Maxwell and Erykah Badu to match the eloquence of "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa."
Then there's "Try a Little Tenderness." Redding's spin on this 1930s war-horse has become his definitive statement, admitting that sometimes "young girls they do get weary," but that when times are hard - well, the salve is found in words both soft and gentle. From start to finish, the singer literally wills himself to believe that notion's truth. He's huffing and puffing with exhaustion by the track's glorious end, but you can bet weariness has left the building, and that tenderness indeed reigns supreme. Its triumph is a curative. There's no better prescription for whatever ails you.
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