美国国家公共电台 NPR Otis Redding's 'Unfinished Life' Still Resonates

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

It's been just about 50 years since Otis Redding died.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHAKE")

OTIS REDDING: (Singing) Shake - let me hear the whole crowd. Shake - everybody sing it. Shake - a little bit louder, shake...

SIMON: Otis Redding ignited the crowd at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and his band was on their airplane on their way to play in Madison, Wisc., when it crashed in a lake in poor weather. Otis Redding was 26 years old, but his influence as a singer and spirit of soul music remains 1. Jonathan Gould has just written a new biography called "Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life." He joins us from New York. Thanks so much for being with us.

JONATHAN GOULD: Thank you for having me.

SIMON: You open your book with the most stunning 2 quote from Bob Weir 3, who had seen Otis Redding at the Monterey Pop Festival.

GOULD: Bob Weir, of course, is the rhythm guitar - was the rhythm guitarist in the Grateful Dead. And his comment about Otis was that he was pretty sure that he'd seen God on stage. And I think that that sort of summed up the response of the whole crowd there, which had never really seen anything on stage quite like this.

SIMON: How did he walk into the door of Stax Records in Memphis?

GOULD: This is the Hollywood aspect of Otis' story. He was a singer in a band that was led by a very flamboyant 4 guitarist named Johnny Jenkins. And they were managed by the young white college boy in Macon who eventually went on to manage Otis as well. But at that time, the whole focus of Phil Walden, his future manager, was on Johnny Jenkins. And Phil and a colorful character named Joe Galkin engineered an opportunity for Johnny Jenkins and also Otis Redding to record at Stax Records in Memphis. And the plan called for Otis to drive Johnny to Memphis from Macon and then hopefully to find a chance to sing after Johnny had finished his work there.

And the way the session played out was that Johnny impressed no one at Stax. And after a few hours, Jim Stewart, who was the owner and engineer at Stax, announced to Joe Galkin that he really didn't think that he was going to be able to make any kind of a record with this fellow. And Galkin pointed 5 out that Atlantic Records had fronted a certain amount of money for this session, and there was still time on the clock. And Joe Galkin said, well, Otis had a ballad 6 that he wanted to sing. And the ballad turned out to be "These Arms Of Mine."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THESE ARMS OF MINE")

REDDING: (Singing) These arms of mine, they are lonely, lonely and feeling blue.

GOULD: It's just a little slip of a song. It's all Otis, but because there's so little there, my sense is it gave him nothing but a feeling to work with. And he was able to just fill all the available space on that record with his voice.

SIMON: Let me ask you about another song identified, well, actually more with Aretha Franklin, but it's an Otis Redding song, and he certainly made a hit out of it too.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RESPECT")

REDDING: (Singing) What you want, want it, you got it. And what you need, baby, you got it. All I'm asking is for a little respect when I come home, hey now, hey, hey, hey, yeah, now, oh, baby.

GOULD: Well, "Respect" was an important record for Otis - his first really successful groove 7 song, as they called them, at Stax. And it's a remarkable 8 record in part because - mainly, I would say, because of the power of the band. But at the same time, Otis had developed an extraordinary ability as a horn arranger. And it was all the more impressive because Otis was a head arranger. He would simply sing these horn lines to the horn players and make them up in his head and put them together in the studio.

SIMON: He wrote this song. This is a - what I'll refer to as a complex love song.

GOULD: Yes.

SIMON: Because he was on the road.

GOULD: Yes, indeed. Otis has spent most of his life on the road. He was also enormously devoted 9 to his wife, Zelma, and their children, who lived back in Macon. That said, he had innumerable liaisons 10 with women on the road. And this made for a complicated situation in his life.

And "Respect," it's a little odd because he's sort of - in some ways, he's sort of putting himself in the position of his wife rather than himself. But it's a song about basically the idea that when he comes home, he needs to be treated with respect and what happens elsewhere, that's another matter.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RESPECT")

REDDING: (Singing) Give us, give us, give us, give it to me, baby, everything I need. Give it to me, baby, everything I want.

SIMON: I want to take advantage of having you in our studios there in New York to ask you about my favorite Otis Redding song, and I didn't know until your book came along that actually Bing Crosby had recorded a version back in 1933.

GOULD: Yes.

SIMON: "Try A Little Tenderness," written by Jimmy Campbell, Reg Connelly and Harry 11 Woods. What did Otis Redding bring to this? 'Cause I think of it as an Otis Redding song.

GOULD: Well, I think everybody does. His cover of it was so revolutionary that I think from that point on it became his song. But it had been a Tin Pan Alley 12 standard. Everybody had recorded it. And it's a sentimental 13 song. And what Otis did with it was he transformed it musically. He begins by singing the song the way everybody sings it, as a slow ballad.

And slowly, over the course of the opening verses, the instruments come in and the intense - the rhythmic 14 intensity 15 of the song sort of starts to increase. And then at a certain point, it moves from his original sort of metier, which was the 12/8 ballad, into a ferocious 16 4/4 stomping 17 groove. And at that point, of course, the whole tenor 18 of the lyrics 19 change. It's a song about tenderness, but there's nothing tender about the way Otis sings the last few verses of the song.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS")

REDDING: (Singing) Try a little tenderness, yeah, yeah. You've got to rub her gentle, man, all you got to do, no, no, no.

SIMON: Finally, as Otis Redding's developing as a singer - and it's remarkable, we have to emphasize again he was just 26 when he died - there's this song that became kind of his epitaph. And, of course, we're talking about "Sittin On The Dock Of The Bay" or "On The Dock Of The Bay" (ph). First, did he really write it - "On The Dock Of A Bay" (ph)?

GOULD: I think he might have begun it there. He spent some time in California toward the end of the summer of 1967. But Otis found himself at the end of that summer, his voice was troubling him. He would eventually have to have a voice operation in a couple of weeks. But looking back on what he had achieved and what he hadn't achieved.

And, of course, what he hadn't achieved was that while he had big hits, including crossover hits that were top 40 hits, he hadn't achieved a number one record. He hadn't achieved a million-selling record. But in California, he had time to reflect on where he had been and a little bit on where he was going.

SIMON: There's great melancholy 20 in the song, lines like - because I've had nothing to live for and looks like nothing's going to come my way - but also a sense of peace and acceptance.

GOULD: Yeah. It's a very complicated song. It's about many things. The odd thing about the song is that at the time he wrote the song, Otis had everything to live for. He had not reached some kind of a dead end in his life. On the contrary, he was on the cusp of a new kind of musical success and I truly believe a new kind of commercial success also. It's a strange reflection on a moment in his life in that way.

SIMON: And then, of course, because it came out after his death and was so wildly successful after his death, it has become regarded as kind of his epitaph.

GOULD: Yeah. And it is that. It only adds to the question that hangs over his whole career and his whole life which is what might have been, where he might have gone. And, of course, that's the premonition that lies in "Sittin On The Dock Of The Bay" I think.

SIMON: Jonathan Gould. His book, "Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life." Thanks so much for being with us.

GOULD: Thank you so much for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SITTIN ON THE DOCK OF THE BAY")

REDDING: (Singing) Sitting in the morning sun, I'll be sitting when the evening comes. Watching the ships roll in, and then I watch them roll away again, yeah. I'm sitting on the dock of the bay watching the tide roll away. Oh, I'm just sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time.

SIMON: This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.