Still sitting on the dock of the bay

 

Very few people know when they are going to die, for that is life’s greatest unknown, except for a few sordid exceptions. And most people are gone too soon, even if they pass away at an advanced age: you would (almost) always hope people will stay on this earth just a little longer in order to experience more of what it has to offer. But some bright stars pass away at an absolutely untimely age, and that is obviously the case with Otis Redding, the man who took 1960’s soul music by storm, only to brutally disappear in a plane crash at age 26 with members of backing band The Bar-Kays, who would go on to fame in their own right in a later iteration…

When we say that Redding took over soul music, that is not and overstatement: along with Sam Cooke, James Brown and Margin Gaye, he is one of the main reasons the very genre emerged from its origins in gospel and jazz music to become a global musical trend that lives on to this day. His powerful vocals, more specifically his uniquely soulful renditions of any song, original or cover (if you never heard his version of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction”, go listen to it right now), made him in many ways a canon for what soul singing was supposed to be like. In short, the man did a lot in his incredibly short time on this earth.

Perhaps his most well known song, and by extension one of popular music’s most enduring standards, has to be “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay“. Written, recorded and released in the last year of his life, it is a testament to Redding’s expanding artistic vision. Indeed, the song comes out as more subdued than most of his other work, as the man was being increasingly influenced by pop and rock releases, including The Beatles’ then-recent Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, an album whose impact can never be underestimated. Consequently, the King of Soul decided to go for a softer, calmer route, to the point of causing hesitation within his team as to what a Redding record should even sound like…

The famous whistling that can be heard at the end of the song, infusing an air of joyful daydreaming, heightened by the tragic context the song was created and released in, which contributed to it topping the Billboard charts, the first posthumous track to ever do so… was a fluke. That’s right: instead, Redding was supposed to ad-lib a few lines, and reportedly had some prepared, but apparently forgot them when the time came to record. Perhaps because the song’s style was different than most of his other songs, it appears he just couldn’t find the words to finish off this track.

Thus leaving us with an open-ended whistling melody that will following Otis Redding into eternity… Rest in peace, Maestro!