Otis Redding got his big break because he was the driver
In 1962 Otis Redding drove guitarist Johnny Jenkins to a recording session in Memphis because Jenkins had no licence. The session fizzled, the studio let the driver sing two songs, and one of them, These Arms of Mine, earned him a contract and eventually sold more than 800,000 copies.
Born on September 9, 1941, in the small town of Dawson, Georgia, Redding grew up in a public housing project in Macon. He sang in a Baptist church choir, earned $6 every Sunday singing gospel on local radio, and cited Little Richard and Sam Cooke as his models. At 15 he left school to support the family after his father fell ill with tuberculosis, digging wells and pumping gas while picking up music work. He won a local teen talent contest 15 weeks running and later sang with the Upsetters, Little Richard's old backing band.
The Stax audition came almost by accident. Studio boss Jim Stewart thought his first song sounded too much like Little Richard, but the ballad that followed, with Steve Cropper on piano, convinced him. Redding toured the Chitlin' Circuit, the chain of venues that welcomed Black performers under segregation. A trip to New York's Apollo in 1963 left the band nearly broke after paying for the house band's sheet music, until headliner Ben E. King handed him $100.
His ballads were so slow that a disc jockey dubbed him Mr. Pitiful, and he and Cropper promptly wrote a song with that title. Ten of the eleven tracks on the album Otis Blue were recorded within about 24 hours in July 1965. He wrote Respect, later made famous by Aretha Franklin, bought a 300-acre ranch, and won over rock crowds at Whisky a Go Go in Los Angeles, where Bob Dylan came to watch. He went on to tour Europe and played the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967.
Redding died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967, aged 26. Weeks earlier he had recorded Dock of the Bay with Cropper. Released in January 1968, it became the first record to top both the pop and R&B charts after its singer had died. His death hit Stax hard, and the struggling label then learned that Atlantic's Atco division owned his whole catalogue.
Source: Otis Redding
