40 years later, fans still love Otis Redding

The ‘chitlin circuit’ and beyond
Born in Dawson, Ga., on Sept. 9, 1941, Redding began singing in the choir of the Vineville Baptist Church after his family moved to Macon, Ga. in 1944

Now home to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, Macon is arguably the epicenter of soul. Little Richard, James Brown and Otis Redding — three men who shaped African-American music in from the 1950s to the 1970s and beyond — all launched their careers here. Redding, who dropped out of high school to help support his family, started his career as a Little Richard-style rock ’n’ roll shouter. In 1960, he met the man who became his agent, Phil Walden. In 1961, he married the woman who would become his widow, Zelma Atwood.

In 1962, Redding cut two of his own songs — “These Arms of Mine” and “Hey Hey Baby” — at the Stax Records studio in Memphis, Tenn. After signing a contract with Stax Records subsidiary Volt, he completed more than 30 recording sessions between June 1963 and Nov. 1967.

Until 1966, however, most of Redding’s performances were in the “chitlin’ circuit” theaters and nightclubs throughout the eastern and southern states that had begun catering primarily to African-Americans during the time when Jim Crow and segregation were prominent in the United States. Although his singles sold well in R&B markets, and he had been well-received at 1966 concerts at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go in Los Angeles and the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, for most of his short life Redding was not considered a commercially viable player in the mainstream white American market.

His first successes with predominately white audiences came from abroad. In 1966, Redding appeared on the British television show “Ready, Steady, Go!” and by the following spring, the popularity of what the British press began calling “Memphis Music” was very clear. In March and April of 1967, he topped the bill of a Stax/Volt European tour that also included Sam and Dave, Booker T. and the MGs, the Mar-Key Horns, Carla Thomas, Arthur Conley and Eddie Floyd.

‘You could feel all the energy’
Then came the Monterey Pop Festival. The majority of the audience members were white and there were only three African-American front men on the three-day festival bill: Lou Rawls, Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix. “Redding was an anomaly there,” says Craig Inciardi, an associate curator for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, who spoke at the Madison tribute. “He was also one of the only people playing at Monterey who wore a suit.”

It was late and starting to rain and the audience was starting to leave when Redding strode onto the stage wearing a green suit and black sweater. He and Booker T. and the MGs, along with the Mar-Key Horns, were the closing act. “On stage was just one of those times when you could feel all the energy and electricity,” recalled keyboard player Booker T. Jones, during a conversation with Redding biographer Geoff Brown. “I think we did one of our best shows, Otis and the MGs.”

Redding took pride in not missing an engagement. The weather was bad on the day he climbed into the co-pilot’s seat for the flight from Cleveland to Madison, but he didn’t want to disappoint his fans. Phil Walden’s brother, Alan, remembers that Redding’s final words were “Gotta make that dollar.”

Thirty years after Redding’s death, Alan Walden penned a remembrance of the “man who never let it go to his head” and concluded it with a wish that, “Perhaps one day I might walk by the first statue of a black man in Macon and you know who I think it should be.”

Five years later, on Sept. 15, 2002, hundreds of people gathered in Macon to witness the unveiling of a bronze statue of Otis Redding sitting on a dock and playing his guitar.

Nadine Goff is a writer and former theater critic who lives in Madison, Wis.

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