It also indulges that counterfactual in which Redding survives: Bob Stanley’s sleevenotes for this album – a parody of the kind of breathless prose you used to get on the back of 1960s LPs – are written as if this was January ’68 and Redding is still alive, looking forward to his biggest ever hit. The Dock Of The Bay Sessions comprises 12 of the best recordings from this astonishingly fertile last few months of Redding’s life. That’s more than 40 tracks to choose from, putting Otis Redding up there with Jimi Hendrix and Tupac Shakur in the profitable posthumous vaults.
Yet more were released in July 1970 as Tell The Truth, and even more 1967 recordings were unearthed on a 1992 compilation entitled Remember Me. It included three old soul covers, including a rambunctious reading of Jackie Wilson’s “ (Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher And Higher”, but mainly featured stately, self-written soul originals. It was followed, a year later by, another collection of a dozen new recordings. The first batch were released in June ’68 as The Immortal Otis Redding – a dozen unreleased tracks, four of which became hit singles, including the deathless, horn-led funk of “ Hard To Handle”. It served as a rather unsatisfactory long-playing eulogy, especially as it emerged that Stax were sitting on a mountain of unreleased Otis sessions recorded throughout 1967. His record label Stax/Volt and its parent company Atlantic, understandably keen to satisfy a desire for a long-player, rush-release an accompanying album called Dock Of The Bay, a curious mish mash of recent singles, b-sides and the odd cover.
A week later, Redding’s funeral in his hometown of Macon, Georgia attracts around 5,000 mourners, and his last ever recording ends up topping the charts the world over. In the real world, of course, Redding’s Beechcraft H18 crashed into Lake Monona, killing him and his touring band, with only trumpeter Ben Cauley surviving.
Redding goes on to thrive, the star of the Monterey Festival becoming the thread that links 60s Stax, 70s Motown, flower power and the sonic advances of Hendrix, Sly Stone and Stevie Wonder. There’s an alternate universe in which Otis Redding’s private jet lands safely on December 10 1967, where Otis returns to the Stax studio in Memphis, completes his single “ (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay”, and puts it at the centre of a radical album that transforms soul music as we know it.
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