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Posted on 01/09/2026 12:58:47 PM PST by nickcarraway
‘(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay,’ co-written with his great friend Steve Cropper, was released on January 8, 1968, a month after Otis’ death at just 26.
It’s a cruel twist in an already tragic story that the biggest song in Otis Redding’s entire catalog is the one that he never saw become a crossover anthem. His posthumous No.1 “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay,” co-written with his great friend Steve Cropper, was released on January 8, 1968, a month after his death in a plane crash at the age of just 26.
Of course, it was partly the raw grief of Otis’ countless admirers that helped lift it to the top. But there’s some comfort in the certainty that this extraordinarily atmospheric and evocative piece would surely have been a major hit anyway. He had taken two passes at the vocal, once on November 22, 1967 and then when he returned to Stax Studio in Memphis on December 7, with Cropper playing acoustic and electric guitar. Three days later, Otis was gone.
Daydreaming on a houseboat
The daydreaming mood of the lyric was based in truth, as Redding had started writing “Dock Of The Bay” when he was in California, sitting on a rented houseboat in Sausalito. Perhaps he was reflecting on the memorable year he’d experienced.
June 1967 had brought Otis’ famous performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, and his R&B hits that year included “Shake” and his duets with Carla Thomas, “Tramp” and “Knock On Wood.” Aretha Franklin took his song “Respect” to No.1, both pop and R&B, and 1967 was also the year in which Otis was named in UK pop weekly Melody Maker’s annual readers’ poll as world’s best male vocalist, ending Elvis Presley’s eight-year ownership of that title.
But for all that success, and 21 R&B chart entries, none of them had fully crossed over to the pop market. Redding’s best showing in that market was the No.25 peak, in late January 1967, of another of his signature songs, “Try A Little Tenderness.” But “Dock Of The Bay” was different. It entered the Hot 100 on January 27, at No.67 and was in the Top 30 just two weeks later.
The song climbed to No.1 on the pop chart in March, for a four-week reign, also topping the R&B listings for three of them. It was the first time that a posthumous single had gone to the top of either chart. In 1998, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” entered the Grammy Hall of Fame.
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Singers, musicians and entertainers in general have a very poor track record with flying......it’s a really long list.
An anthem for the homeless and druggies infesting our cities.
“got nothing to live for, can’t see anything going my way. So I’m just sitting on a dock in the bay.......”
I told him to take the train. But some people you just can't reach.
I saw his smoohedup twin engine aircraft on the bed of a “deuceandahalf’ truck after being fished out of the lake
Madison WI, sits on an ithsmis between two lakes. You fly short of the runway, or fly long, you smack water. His plane was smooshed to the wing box and the engines were out the back of the nacelles. To me,as a kid then, (my dad was assigned to ‘base operations’, where he preflight checked all the A.D.C. pilots’ computations, weather, and flight course.), it looked more like a large RC model that smacked dirt, more than a real live smoohedup private plane.
Boston Legal - Dock of the Bay - Otis Redding - streaming from my website
https://www.iment.com/maida/tv/bl/video/Boston-Legal-Dock-of-the-Bay-Otis-Redding.htm
June 1967 had brought Otis’ famous performance at the Monterey Pop Festival
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That was the greatest festival of all time. The chicks were hot too. Wish sometimes I could go back and watch it all again.
I wasn’t born yet, but I would too.
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