Having shot to prominence after the 1967 Stax Volt tour of Europe add the Monterey Pop Festival, you’d reckon Otis Redding was just on the verge of hitting the big time when he was killed in a plane crash on 10 December 1967. Shortly thereafter the iconic (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay became the first posthumous number-one record on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B charts, but that was, of course as far as things went.
Not that the sharecropper’s son from Georgia had done too badly up to that point. His gospel singing father Otis Redding, Sr. had moved on to work at Robins Air Force Base, but contracted tuberculosis when his son was fifteen. Young Otis left school, joined the work force and sang Little Richard's Heebie Jeebies at talent shows for the $5 prize money. Every little bit helps, and he took the prize money every week for around three months.
Little Richard and Sam Cooke were his main influences, and he worked on and off with Little Richard's Upsetters after Richard abandoned rock and roll for the first time, then joined Johnny Jenkins' band, the Pinetoppers in 1958. Over the next four years, Redding picked up work wherever he could, met manager Phil Walden along the way, cut some singles for Bobby Smith’s Confederate Records.
Walden also managed Johnny Jenkins and his pursuit of a record label resulted in a 1962 session at the Stax studio in Memphis. Redding drove Jenkins to the session and Jenkins cut a couple of tracks with Booker T. & the M.G.'s. When the session ended early Redding got to sing two songs. Hey Hey Baby sounded too much like Little Richard, but These Arms of Mine, with Jenkins on piano and Steve Cropper on guitar with the Richard soundalike on the B-side was released on Volt on October 1962. It didn’t chart until March the following year but ended up moving more than 800,000 copies and Redding’s career was off and running.
Pain in My Heart, recorded in September 1963, sounded like Irma Thomas' Ruler of My Heart, sparked copyright issues but still peaked at number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. Further chart action came in the form of Mr. Pitiful, Chained And Bound, and That's How Strong My Love Is all of which turned up on Redding's second album, The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads, released in March 1965. A third album, Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul appeared six months later.
While he still wasn’t a household name as far as the wider community was concerned, Otis was doing well enough to be able to pay $125,000 for a 300-acre ranch in Georgia (the Big O Ranch) and in league with manager Walden operated a couple of production companies, grooming proteges including Arthur Conley, the Sweet Soul Music man.
Things started to move up a gear when Redding performed at the Whisky a Go Go on the Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip, and as one of the first soul artists to perform on the West Coast he picked up positive reviews in the press and the Northern spring of 1966 saw the Stax Volt tour of Europe, with Redding headlining a revue that reached substantial new audiences.