| rdfs:comment | - Full Name: Otis Ray Redding, Jr. Born: September 9, 1941 – December 10, 1967 Home: Macon, GA
- The Otis Redding track 'Ole Man Trouble' was a major favourite of Peel, who selected it as one of 40 songs for his 40th birthday and for the 1965 Peelenium. Regular listeners were familiar with his story about hearing the song for the first time, as recounted to Andy Peebles in My Top Ten (1984):
- Otis Redding, born Otis Ray Redding Jr., in Dawson, Georgia. When he was 5 years old, Redding's family moved to Macon, Georgia, where he grew up listening to the music of Sam Cooke and Little Richard. In the late 1950s, Redding joined the Upsetters, the band that had formerly backed Little Richard.
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| abstract | - Full Name: Otis Ray Redding, Jr. Born: September 9, 1941 – December 10, 1967 Home: Macon, GA
- Otis Redding, born Otis Ray Redding Jr., in Dawson, Georgia. When he was 5 years old, Redding's family moved to Macon, Georgia, where he grew up listening to the music of Sam Cooke and Little Richard. In the late 1950s, Redding joined the Upsetters, the band that had formerly backed Little Richard. In 1960, Otis Redding moved to Los Angeles, California, where he began releasing singles. He returned to Georgia a year later and recorded "Shout Bamalama." He befriended guitarist Johnny Jenkins and joined his band, the Pinetoppers. During one of Jenkins's recording sessions at Memphis's Stax studios, Redding recorded a ballad he'd written, "These Arms of Mine." The song quickly took off, rising to No. 20 on the R&B charts in 1963. Redding began a career recording at Stax, playing guitar and arranging his own songs. He was known for his energy in the studio and, in 1965, recorded the album Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul in one day. He released "I've Been Loving Your Too Long (to Stop Now)" that same year, and "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)" a year later. In 1967, Redding released a successful duet album with Carla Thomas. That same year, he produced Arthur Conley's "Sweet Soul Music," which went to No. 2 on the R&B charts. Other artists of the day were influenced by Redding and Aretha Franklin's rendition of his song, "Respect," became legendary. Hoping to become more involved behind the scenes, Redding started his own label, Jotis. On December 6, 1967, Redding recorded "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay." The song hit No. 1 on the pop and R&B charts the following year, but Redding wouldn't live to see his success. Four days after the recording session—on December 10, 1967—Redding and four members of his band, the Bar-Keys, were killed after their chartered plane crashed into a Wisconsin lake.
- The Otis Redding track 'Ole Man Trouble' was a major favourite of Peel, who selected it as one of 40 songs for his 40th birthday and for the 1965 Peelenium. Regular listeners were familiar with his story about hearing the song for the first time, as recounted to Andy Peebles in My Top Ten (1984): I used to live in Oklahoma and work for a radio station just outside Oklahoma City. I used to do gigs on Indian reservations in the south of the state; it’s one of these things which sounds “come on, he’s making this up”, but it is true. And I used to work with a band called Dan Yankee & The Carpetbaggers, who were wonderful people, and we were driving back from the gig, it must have been 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning, listening to a radio station coming from Memphis, and this next record came on. ... We actually pulled over to the side of the road ... we were just transfixed. Although Peel was familiar with Redding from his years in America, the DJ focused on other kinds of music on his Perfumed Garden and Top Gear shows when he returned to the UK in 1967, the year of the singer's death. (Nevertheless, Redding had some credibility with musiicans and audiences of the hippy era, and he was invited to perform at the celebrated 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, one of the key events of the so-called "summer of love".) In later decades, when soul became a more regular feature of Peel's programmes, Redding was heard relatively often, including festive Christmas songs and a second Peelenium choice in the form of 'Try A Little Tenderness'. In addition, the Detroit Cobras made #15 in the 2001 Festive Fifty with Redding's early hit Shout Bama Lama.
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