(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay
| "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" | |
|---|---|
| Song | |
| B-side | "Sweet Lorene" (Volt issue) "Keep Your Arms Around Me" (Atco reissue) |
"(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" is a soul song written and performed by American soul singer Otis Redding, released posthumously on Stax Records' Volt label in 1968 and was the first posthumous single in U.S. chart history.
Origins of the song
While on tour with the Bar-Kays in August 1967, Redding wrote the first verse of the song, under the abbreviated title "Dock of the Bay," at a houseboat on Waldo Pier in Sausalito, California. [1] He had come off his famed performance at the Monterey Pop Festival just months earlier in June 1967. While touring in support of the LPs King & Queen (collaborations with female vocalist Carla Thomas) and his live set Live in Europe, he continued to scribble lines of the song on napkins and hotel paper. In November of that year he joined producer and guitarist Steve Cropper at the Stax recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee.
In a 1990 interview on NPR's Fresh Air, Cropper explained the "origins" of the song:
Otis was one of those kind of guys who had 100 ideas. Anytime he came in to record he always had 10 or 15 different intros or titles, or whatever. He had been at San Francisco playing The Fillmore, and he was staying at a boathouse, which is where he got the idea of the ship coming in. That's about all he had: "I watch the ships come in and I watch them roll away again." I took that and finished the lyrics. If you listen to the songs I wrote with Otis, most of the lyrics are about him. He didn't usually write about himself, but I did. "Mr. Pitiful," "Sad Song (Fa-Fa);" they were about 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.[2]
Together, they completed the music and melancholy lyrics of "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay." From those sessions emerged Otis Redding's final recordings, including "Dock of the Bay," which was recorded on November 22, with additional overdubs on December 8. [1] The result was a song quite different in style from most of Redding's other recordings, but one with which he was very pleased. [1] While discussing his latest song with his wife, Redding stated that he wanted to "be a little different" with "The Dock of the Bay" and "change his style". [1] There were concerns that "The Dock of the Bay" had too much of a pop feel for an Otis Redding record, and contracting Stax gospel act The Staples Singers to recording backing vocals was discussed, but never carried out. [1]
Redding continued to tour after the recording sessions and, on December 9, the charter plane which was carrying him crashed into Lake Monona, outside Madison, Wisconsin. Redding and six others were killed. Only one passenger survived, Ben Cauley of The Bar-Kays. Redding's body was recovered from the lake the day after the crash.
Universal success
"(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" was released in January 1968 amid the fall-out of Redding's death. R&B stations readily added the song to their playlists, which had been saturated with Redding's previous hits. The song shot to number one on the R&B charts in early 1968. By early summer of that year, "Dock of the Bay" topped the pop charts. The album, which shared the song's title, was released and became his largest selling to date, peaking at number four on the Pop Albums chart. "Dock of the Bay" went on to gain success in countries across the world, and brought Redding the greatest success of his career. The song went on to win two Grammy Awards: Best R&B Song (for songwriting) and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance (for vocals).
Legacy
Redding's body of work at the time of his death was immense, including a backlog of archived recordings and the recordings done in November and December 1967 just before Redding's death. In mid-1968, Stax Records severed its distribution contract with Atlantic Records, who retained the label's back catalog and the rights to the unreleased Otis Redding masters. [3] Through its Atco and Reprise subsidiaries (Atco had distributed Otis Redding's releases from Stax's Volt label), Atlantic issued three more albums of new Redding material, two live albums, and eight 45 RPM singles between 1968 and 1970. [3] Both studio albums and anthologies sold well in America and abroad. Redding was especially successful in the United Kingdom, where The Dock of the Bay went to number one, and the following album, a greatest hits LP entitled History of Otis Redding, reached number two (in the U.S., History of Otis Redding preceded The Dock of the Bay in release order).
"The Dock of the Bay" itself has been immensely popular, even after its stay at the top of the charts. It has been featured on various soundtracks, including the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun[4]. The song has come to represent the decade of its creation, and it has been covered by many artists, from his peers like Glen Campbell, Percy Sledge and Sam & Dave to artists of various genres, including Jimmy Velvit (whose cover version was included on his 2001 Grammy nominated album Sun Sea & Sand), Widespread Panic (2006), Willie Nelson, Kenny Rankin, Dennis Brown, Michael Bolton (whose cover version of the song reached #11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1988), Pearl Jam, The Format, Brent Smith of Shinedown (during an acoustic set in 2008), Sammy Hagar (1979) and Justin Nozuka (2007) . Cat Power's "You May Know Him" (from her 1998 album Moon Pix) seems to be inspired by the melody of "The Dock of the Bay." In 1999, BMI named the song as the sixth-most performed song of the 20th century, with about six million performances. Rolling Stone ranked Redding's album, The Dock of the Bay number 161 on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, the third of five Redding albums that made the list. "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" was ranked twenty-eighth on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, the second highest of four Redding songs on the list, after "Respect".[5]
Chart history
References
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