Otis Redding

Otis Redding was born on September 9, 1941, in Dawson, Georgia, the fourth of six children of sharecropper Otis Redding Sr. and Fannie Mae Redding. The family moved to Macon, Georgia when he was still a toddler, and Macon is where he grew up^[1]. He got his start singing in the choir at Vineville Baptist Church and playing in the band at Ballard Hudson High School before turning to music full time^[1].

His break came almost by accident. In 1960 he joined singer and guitarist Johnny Jenkins's band, the Pinetoppers, working as a vocalist and also as the group's driver^[1]. In August 1962, Redding drove Jenkins to Stax Records in Memphis for a session. With studio time left over at the end of Jenkins's booking, Stax co-owner Jim Stewart let Redding cut a couple of songs of his own. One of them, "These Arms of Mine," became the first of what would eventually be fifteen R&B chart hits for Redding and launched his recording career at Stax^[1].

Redding's run at Stax through the mid-1960s included Pain in My Heart, Otis Blue, and Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul, the last of which produced his signature hit "Try a Little Tenderness." In early 1967 he recorded a duet album with Carla Thomas, King & Queen, which became his final studio album, and that July Stax released Live in Europe, the only live album issued during his lifetime, drawn from the Stax/Volt package tour of Europe that spring^[2].

Redding died on December 10, 1967, at age twenty-six, when his chartered plane crashed into Lake Monona near Madison, Wisconsin, while en route to a concert. Seven of the eight people aboard were killed; trumpeter Ben Cauley was the only survivor. The cause of the crash was never conclusively determined^[3]. "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," recorded just days before the crash, was released the following year and became his best-known and best-selling song, released posthumously^[3].