Otis Redding - Dock of the Bay

The Last Will and Testament of St. Otis

1. One of the all-timers, soulful pop perfection in every conceivable way, and Otis never got to hear it. He wrote the first draft in August of ‘67 on a boat house in Sausalito, California following his transcendent performance at the Monterrey Pop Festival - the same festival at which Jimi Hendrix famously torched his guitar.

   

   The view from a lookout point at the Waldo Point Harbor in Sausalito, Calif., where Otis Redding conceived (Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay.

   Otis went on tour but kept coming back to the song, jotting down lyrics whenever he could. He ultimately returned to the Stax Recording Studios in Memphis where he linked up with best friend, guitarist, songwriter, and producer Steve Cropper of Booker T and the MGs, who helped him finish the lyrics in November.

   

   In a September 1990 interview on NPR's Fresh Air, Cropper said:

   Otis was one of those [guys] who had 100 ideas. He had been in San Francisco doing The Fillmore. And the story that I got, he was renting a boathouse, or stayed at a boathouse or something, and that's where he got the idea of the ships coming in the bay there. And that's about all he had: "I watch the ships come in and I watch them roll away again." I just took that... and I finished the lyrics. If you listen to the songs I collaborated on with Otis, most of the lyrics are about him. Otis didn't really write about himself but I did. Songs like Mr. Pitiful, Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song); they were about Otis and Otis' life. Dock of the Bay was exactly that: "I left my home in Georgia, headed for the Frisco Bay" was all about him going out to San Francisco to perform.

   Otis recorded the vocal on November 22 with a few overdubs on December 8. He was touring then as well, in and out of the studio. On December 10th, his charter plane went down near Lake Monona outside of Madison, Wisconsin. The crash claimed seven in total, including the pilot, a young assistant, and four teenage members of his band, the Bar-Kays.

2. For a few weeks after the crash, Cropper, a truly gifted and genuinely legendary player, mourned his best friend as the vocal tracks for Dock of the Bay sat in the Stax vaults. Steve realized, to the benefit of all humanity, the best eulogy would be to finish the work. He laid the guitar track himself on the six-string with the other members of Booker T and the MGs lending an assist. The seagulls and waves crashing were added into the mix as well, as Otis and Steve talked about recapturing the sounds of Otis’ time on that dock as closely as possible. That famous whistle? According to legend, one I chose to believe, Otis was known to be an early riser. One morning he was in the studio setting up mic stands and the drum kit for a recording session. Cropper came in as he was sipping his morning coffee, and Otis began whistling to himself. He had no idea anyone was listening - just a man going about his business with a melody in his head. Steve pushed the record button. Stax Records released Dock of the Bay on their Volt label on January 8, 1968. It was Otis’ only number-one pop song and it became the first posthumous release to hit number one.

3. Dock of the Bay is less a song than it is a testimonial from up on high. Indeed, when Otis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, the Hall declared Otis’ name to be synonymous with the term Soul. “Music that arose out of the Black experience in America, through the transmutation of the gospel, rhythm and blues, into a form of funky, secular testifying,” they said. The Rock Hall doesn’t get it right often enough, but that bullseyed that one.

   If ever a race of extraterrestrials lands on this planet, and by some small chance, they discover a recording of "Dock of the Bay," and by another miracle, they have the means to play it, they will almost certainly proclaim it to be from whatever heavens they believe in. The moments where Cropper’s fingers can be heard on the guitar — those unmistakably human moments —will be the only clues this song was created by humans.