A little respect

Ask any classical mythology buff what really gets up his nose, and he’ll start bellyaching about showboating deities that constantly upstage their more worthy peers with their attention-getting antics. With self-promoters like Athena, Ares, Artemis, Hera and Zeus clamouring for the public’s attention, it’s hard for top-shelf gods like Hades and Gaea and Persephone and Demeter to get a look-in. The most egregious case of a first-rate deity being denied the acclaim he so richly deserves is Poseidon, lord of the seas. Far more important in the grand scheme of things than clowns like Apollo and brassy sluts like Aphrodite, Poseidon has never caught the public’s fancy the way his more bodacious co-divinities have; never gotten the credit he deserves for running a pretty tight ship, aquatically speaking.

Otis Redding is the Poseidon of Pop, the classic example of a titan who has never been accorded the homage he deserves. Yes, he is a god, but he should be a bigger one. There are several reasons why he is not. In the official history of rock ‘n’ roll, set in stone by assorted turnips and dolts, the three sacred persons in the Holy Trinity of Sixties Pop Music are Jimi Hendrix, dead at age 27, Janis Joplin, who also checked out three years shy of her 30th birthday, and Jim Morrison, who breathed his last in the City of Light at age 28. Hendrix and Joplin bought the farm in 1970, Morrison one year later. Thus, all three passed away after the earth-shattering events of 1968, events so earth-shattering we don’t need to repeat them here. But rest assured: They were earth-shattering. Redding, by contrast, perished in a Madison, Wisconsin airplane crash two weeks before Christmas in 1967, at age 26. Redding was the victim of incredibly poor mythological timing. If there was ever a pop star who died just a little bit too soon, it was him.

It didn’t help Redding that his death could not be shoehorned into a pre-fab mythology in the way those of his three contemporaries could. Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison all died deaths that were largely self-induced, the victims of serious substance-abuse problems. Not to put too fine a point on it, they were screw-ups. But Redding, like Buddy Holly, went down in a plane crash, and plane crashes are not so much tragic as stupid. There was, or so the media thought, a moral to be drawn from the demise of the Big Three, perhaps several: too much too soon, youth is wasted on the young, this is your brain on drugs. Well, was. But there was nothing to be taken away from Redding’s death, because plane crashes don’t tell us anything about the human condition other than: we know not the day nor the hour.

Equally injurious to Redding’s legacy was the phenomenal success of the song (Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay. Cut just three days before he died, and released shortly thereafter, the wistful ballad was the biggest hit of his career, the only one of his singles to reach the top spot on the charts. Because the song, at least to some, presaged his death, it has become the one Redding tune that has entered the permanent canon, a song that has been played so many times over (according to some reports it is among the most performed songs of the 20th century) that it is impossible to remember when it was new. In this, it resembles Derek & the Dominos’ Layla; there must have been a time when it did not exist, but nobody can remember when that was. Or, to put it another way, just as there will always be an England, there always be a Benny. And there will always be the Jets.

It is unfortunate that Dock of the Bay is the song Redding is most remembered for, as it is not his best, nor in any way, shape or form, does it typify his work. Dock of the Bay is sung by a man who is sitting down feeling sorry for himself. Nobody ever saw Otis Redding sit down. Otis Redding, live in concert, was a volcano, bringing a rollicking effervescence to his act that was rivaled at the time only by James Brown. He wasn’t so much a vocalist as a revivalist, he didn’t sing his material, he preached it. Bear in mind that Redding’s showcase numbers, the songs that do typify his career – I Can’t Turn You Loose, Mr. Pitiful, Shake, his cover of Satisfaction – were all deliriously upbeat R&B tunes, supported by a small army of horns in the background. This was dance music, and when Otis Redding started singing, people started dancing.

This is another reason Redding is a somewhat overlooked deity: pop music was moving away from horn-based R&B the year he died, with Jimi Hendrix leading the exodus to psychedelia and interplanetary goofiness. 1967 was the year of the Monterey Pop Festival, the event that changed pop music forever. Hendrix and Redding both performed at the event, and each was well received. But afterwards, only Hendrix’s incendiary rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was remembered. Maybe Redding should have tried burning a guitar. Or a sax.

Dock of the Bay, one of the only pop tunes of the 60s that has a significant whistling component, was co-written by Steve Cropper, one of the few living legends whose legend derives from something other than having been around for a long time. Lead guitarist with the equally admired Booker T & The M-Gs, Cropper wrote Dock of the Bay with Redding, Knock on Wood with Eddie Floyd, and In the Midnight Hour with Wilson Pickett. He is often identified as one of the greatest living guitarists, raising the question: if Steve Cropper is such a fabulous songwriter and one of the greatest living guitarists, how come Lenny Kravitz has all the money? Because of Joplin’s tragic life, amply reflected in the lyrics to her songs; because of Morrison’s Dionysian weirdness and all-around aura of androgynous Oedipal leather-pantsed Byronic West Coast lugubriousness; and because Hendrix is the most important instrumentalist rock’n’roll has ever produced, it’s been easy to shunt Otis Redding into one of the side chapels in the pantheon. But Redding, who wrote or co-wrote almost all of his hits, and who is also the composer of Respect, was a better songwriter than Hendrix, a better singer than Joplin, a better performer than Morrison, and more fun than all three of them rolled together, though admittedly they were not a barrel of monkeys. I’ve visited the great state of Wisconsin many times over the course of my life, but 41 years later, I’ve still never been to Madison. At this late date, I’m keeping it that way. I’m just sitting here resting my bones; this loneliness won’t leave me alone.