Otis Redding Quotes

Somewhere between banging on logs and the invention of M.I.D.I. technology we have made a terrible wrong turn. We must have ridden right past our stop. We should have stepped down off the train at that moment when rhythm and harmony and technology all culminated to a single Otis Redding whine. That moment of the truest, most genuine expression of what it means to be human.

Over the roar of our motor, we catch snippets of radio hits blasting off the boats we pass: Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” and Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun” and Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.

Take my hand, don't be afraid. I'm wanna prove every word I say.

You Can Fly But Your Body Can't My first seat was in first class between Penny and Belinda. Before I poured Rémy Martin down my throat and had to come see what the folks back here think of things. 316 'Cool out, you know, I didn't mean it, I don't really hate you,' I hear someone say. While, over the intercom, the pilot jabbers. He's explaining that some dysfunction, once we're on the ground, can be easily fixed with a pin. I don't know, at that point, how much any of us will care. Maybe I'm drunk, but seems like they could give the plane to the Arabs once we've all made our connecting flights. 317 The beer nuts just served to me in a cello packet are the most delicious food I've ever tasted in my life. Back at Dallas-Fort Worth I put an Otis Redding CD into my player and I doubt I'll ever have a reason to take it out. Through the window, trigonometry, under a silky pink sky.

It's weird not being in our subculture of two any more. There was Jen's culture, her little habits and ways of doing things; the collection of stuff she'd already learnt she loved before we met me. Chorizo and Jonathan Franken and long walks and the Eagles (her dad). Seeing the Christmas lights. Taylor Swift, frying pans in the dishwasher, the works absolutely, arsewipe, heaven. Tracy Chapman and prawn jalfrezi and Muriel Spark and HP sauce in bacon sandwiches. And then there was my culture. Steve Martin and Aston Villa and New York and E.T. Chicken bhuna, strange-looking cats and always having squash or cans of soft drinks in the house. The Cure. Pink Floyd. Kanye West, friend eggs, ten hours' sleep, ketchup in bacon sandwiches. Never missing dental check-ups. Sister Sledge (my mum). Watching TV even if the weather is nice. Cadbury's Caramel. John and Paul and George and Ringo. And then we met and fell in love and we introduced each other to all of it, like children showing each other their favourite toys. The instinct never goes - look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I've chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other's self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together. Our culture was tea drink from very large mugs. And looking forward to the Glastonbury ticket day and the new season of Game of Thrones and taking the piss out of ourselves for being just like everyone else. Our culture was over-tipping in restaurants because we both used to work in the service industry, salty popcorn at the cinema and afternoon naps. Side-by-side morning sex. Home-made Manhattans. Barmade Manhattans (much better). Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee" (our song). Discovering a new song we both loved and listening to it over and over again until we couldn't listen to it any more. Period dramas on a Sunday night. That one perfect vibrator that finished her off in seconds when we were in a rush. Gravy. David Hockney. Truffle crisps. Can you believe it? I still can't believe it. A smell indisputably reminiscent of bums. On a crisp. And yet we couldn't get enough of them together - stuffing them in our gobs, her hand on my chest, me trying not to get crumbs in her hair as we watched Sense and Sensibility (1995). But I'm not a member of that club anymore. No one is. It's been disbanded, dissolved, the domain is no longer valid. So what do I do with all its stuff? Where so I put it all? Where do I take all my new discoveries now I'm no longer a tribe of two? And if I start a new sub-genre of love with someone else, am I allowed to bring in all the things I loved from the last one? Or would that be weird? Why do I find this so hard?

Why were hippies such a threat, from the President on down to local levels, objects for surveillance and disruptions? Many of the musicians had the potential to become political. There were racial overtones to the black-white sounds, harmony between Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix. Black music was the impetus that drove the Rolling Stones into composing and performing. The war in Vietnam we escalated. What if they stopped protesting the war in Southeast Asia and turned to expose domestic policies at home with the same energy? One of the Byrds stopped singing at Monterey Pop to question the official Warren Report conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was a “lone assassin.” Bob Dylan’s Bringing it All Back Home album features a picture of Lyndon Johnson on the cover of Time. By 1966, LBJ had ordered writers and critics of his commission report on the JFK murder under surveillance. That research was hurting him. Rock concerts and Oswald. What next?

For the bus ride, which Delaney estimated would be ninety minutes, she had prepared a mix of happy journeying music, which she activated as they pulled out of the campus gate. The first song was by Otis Redding, and the first message came via her phone. Woman-hater, it said, with a link to an unsigned and evidence-less post hinting that he had been unkind to an ex-girlfriend who he’d met shortly before the bay and the dock and the sitting. Thanks for the early-morning pick-me-up! the writer said, meaning that Delaney had ruined the day and tacitly endorsed Redding’s newly alleged misogyny. Delaney skipped to the next song, Lana Del Rey’s “High by the Beach,” and then quickly figured it was too big a risk so skipped ahead. The third song, the Muppets’ “Movin’ Right Along,” was unknown to most on the bus, and survived its three-minute length, during which a handful of passengers furiously tried to find a reason the song was complicit in evil committed or implied. Delaney skipped the next song, by Neil Diamond, thinking any Jewish singer dubious in light of the Israeli sandwich debacle, skipped songs six and seven (from Thriller), briefly considered the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” but then remembered Phil Spector, and so finally settled on a young Ghanian rapper she’d recently discovered. His first song was hunted down quickly in a hail of rhetorical buckshot—as a teen, the rapper had zinged a borderline joke about his female trigonometry teacher—so Delaney turned off the shared music, leaving everyone, for the next eighty-one minutes, to their earbuds and the safety of their individualized solitude.

(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay" Sittin' in the morning sun I'll be sittin' when the evening comes Watching the ships roll in Then I watch them roll away again, yeah I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay Wastin' time I left my home in Georgia Headed for the Frisco Bay Cuz I've had nothing to live for And look like nothing's gonna come my way So, I'm just gon' sit on the dock of the bay Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay Wastin' time Looks like nothing's gonna change Everything still remains the same I can't do what ten people tell me to do So I guess I'll remain the same, listen Sittin' here resting my bones And this loneliness won't leave me alone, listen Two thousand miles I roam Just to make this dock my home, now I'm just gon' sit at the dock of a bay Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh Sittin' on the dock of the bay Wastin' time [Ends in harmonic whistling]

For a couple weeks now, Otis had been struggling with his sense of smell and taste. When he first noticed the symptoms, he chalked it up to a cold or a hiccup of growing old; perhaps a result of too many hours spent with his tobacco pipe as of late. But his condition was getting so bad that he might be incapable of making wine this year.

Wynne carried Smoky to the lawn outside, where he propped her into a GI helmet, to recreate the winning Yank Magazine image for the Red Cross photographer. But Smoky's tongue was hanging out exhaustedly, and it struck Wynne that she looked more like a dog-tired, war bitten soldier, than what she had been back then - namely, the gift that never stopped giving.

What it is, coming out of and entering into all of those people in a swirl of transubstantiation, is soul music, here taking a shape so stark that it makes the style, in the deepest sense of the word, turn around the record as if that seven-inch disc were the sun, with the first, struggling attempts in the 1950s to discover the music—Ray Charles’s “What Would I Do Without You,” the Chantels’ “If You Try,” the Five Keys’ “Dream On”—and the deep-soul records of the mid-’60s that can seem to take the style, now a form, as far as it could go—Irma Thomas’s “Wish Someone Would Care,” Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness,” and Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You,” Lonnie Mack’s “Why,” most of all Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna come”—the planets that circle it. And because soul music is the limitless affirmation of the individual despite his or her past sins and all obstacles in his or her way, an affirmation that remains even in the moment before suicide, as it can seem to be in “Wish Someone Would Care” and “Why,” each of these records can, in the moment in which you hear them, be the sun, and all the rest, “This Magic Moment” spinning with them, again mere planets, maybe even, someday, should they ever fade, and their lies speak more loudly than whatever truths they tell, written out of the book and taken down from the sky, like Pluto—except that once a song has gone into the ether, it never disappears.

Otis told her of his woes, and Morgan listened quietly, sipping her coffee, absorbing some of his pain. She finally asked the same questions Brooks had. Was it temporary? Had he been to the doctor? What could it be? Otis told her it could be many things and that he hadn’t had it checked out yet. Morgan said, “You’re scared. I’ve been through it when I had cancer. I knew something was wrong. My body felt off. But I didn’t want to go to the doctor and justify it. I felt like if I kept it to myself, it might go away. Or at least I could enjoy a few more days without having to deal with any bad news. But you know what? This could be a new chapter in your life, and if you’re putting off finding out what’s going on, you could be making it worse. Your body is asking for your help right now, and you’re ignoring it.” “I’m not ignoring—” “Shh, Otis. Can’t you listen for once in your life? Let an old lady speak her mind.” “I know a thing or two about dying. Now, you might get it checked out, and it’s nothing. A quick remedy and you’re all fixed up. In that case, you’re wasting a whole lot of good life, hell, this whole harvest, worrying for no reason. Let’s say there is something wrong. What if it’s one of those things better to catch early on? What if it’s something treatable? What if you could be healing by now?” She threw her finger in the air. “Okay, and worst-case. What if the doctor tells you you’re dying? Don’t you want to know that? Don’t you have better things to do in your final days than running around naked barking like a dog?” Otis laughed and his face reddened. “You wouldn’t understand.

And then we met and fell in love and we introduced each other to all of it, like children showing each other their favourite toys. The instinct never goes - look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I've chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other's self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together. Our culture was tea drink from very large mugs. And looking forward to the Glastonbury ticket day and the new season of Game of Thrones and taking the piss out of ourselves for being just like everyone else. Our culture was over-tipping in restaurants because we both used to work in the service industry, salty popcorn at the cinema and afternoon naps. Side-by-side morning sex. Home-made Manhattans. Barmade Manhattans (much better). Otis Redding's "Cigarettes and Coffee" (our song). Discovering a new song we both loved and listening to it over and over again until we couldn't listen to it any more.

And then we met and fell in love and we introduced each other to all of it, like children showing each other their favourite toys. That instinct never goes—look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I’ve chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other’s self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together. Our culture was tea drunk from very large mugs. And looking forward to the Glastonbury ticket day and the new season of Game of Thrones and taking the piss out of ourselves for being just like everyone else. Our culture was over-tipping in restaurants because we both used to work in the service industry, salty popcorn at the cinema and afternoon naps. Side-by-side morning sex. Home-made Manhattans. Bar-made Manhattans (much better). Otis Redding’s “Cigarettes and Coffee” (our song). Discovering a new song we both loved and listening to it over and over again until we

But I didn’t say this to my aunt. Instead, I said, “America is number one.” This had been the campaign slogan of the man who would eventually become our president. Charles Otis, my old classmate and neighbor, was one of his supporters and had taken to wearing a red mesh baseball hat with that slogan on its face, although on Charles’s hat the symbol was on the wrong side of the number: AMERICA IS 1#.

Players always talk about glitches and what they would do if they saw one, but I don’t think anyone really does ever get to see them. We have an opportunity to become legendary.” “Shut up.” It was Otis. He had come out of the house and had overheard that last bit. “You have no idea what legendary is. You wouldn’t know it if it hit you in the face.” “I sure would,” Pro said, balling his fists defiantly. Otis walked over to him, reached up, and slapped him in the face. “So?” Pro’s face turned beetroot red with anger, but then the redness subsided and he started to laugh. “You’re saying that you’re legendary?” “I know I’m legendary. Even the annoying Warrior over there is legendary, though he’s probably more legendary than he deserves.” “Hey!” I said, feeling insulted. Pro continued to laugh. “It’s alright Otis, I’ll be happy to call you the Little Legend, if you’d like.” Otis snarled. “Otis will be fine.” He reached into his inventory and pulled out a jar of applesauce and a spoon began eating.

Otis said: “We believe Red Lobster will benefit from a much sharper focus on the middle and lower thirds where it has traditionally enjoyed success.

announced that Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays would be performing in Madison, two friends and I cut class and raced to the Factory, where we plunked down three bucks apiece for tickets. In the weeks leading up to the concert, Steve Kruvant, Rick Kleiner, and I wore out the grooves of Otis’s Live in Europe LP. From the emcee’s introductory cheerleading (“Gimme an O!”) to the final horn blasts