The thought that kept running through his mind was “I watch the ships come in and I watch them roll away again.” He would literally sit and watch the ferry boats run back and forth. Otis had gone to San Francisco to perform at the Fillmore, and while there he stayed at a boathouse in Sausalito, just across the bay. But the down time had given him a season for musical reflection that now took him in a somewhat different direction. To everyone’s relief, Otis sounded even better after he recovered from the operation than before. Naturally, there was some trepidation concerning what this might mean for his voice. Under doctors’ orders, he was forbidden to sing or talk for six weeks after the procedure. He had to have surgery to remove polyps from his vocal cords. “We had our own Woodstock,” says wife, Zelma Redding.Īt this high point of his career, there was only one cloud on Otis Redding’s horizon. In the wake of his success on the worldwide stage provided by the Monterey festival, he hosted a huge barbecue for about 300 guests involved in the music industry at his 300-acre Big O Ranch about 25 miles north of his former home in Macon, Georgia. As the only soul music act at the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, Otis gave a scintillating performance that, according to the Memphis Music Hall of Fame, “stole the show from Janis Joplin, the Who, and Jimi Hendrix.” He now became an ascending star, not just among African Americans, but with pop music fans all over the world. Then came the event that catapulted Otis Redding to fame with an audience he had never reached before. was on drums, and Johnny Jenkins played guitar (one can only imagine what his feelings must have been). was already gone, guitarist Steve Cropper got on the piano, Al Jackson Jr. Stewart called for him to pull out his bass and come back in. Bass player Louis Steinberg had already packed his instrument in his car but hadn’t yet left. That’s exactly how it came across, like an imitation, and it did not impress.īut then Otis requested that Cropper play what are known as “gospel triplets” on the piano, and he began to sing a ballad he had written, “These Arms of Mine.” The reaction was immediate! As Cropper says, “We all fell on the floor.” He grabbed Jim Stewart, the head of the label, and Stewart, too, was blown away.īy that time, most of the musicians who had been there for the Johnny Jenkins session were gone. Otis started by singing an up-tempo number in the style of Little Richard, whom he had often imitated. Going to the piano, Cropper asked Otis what he wanted to do. In a decision that changed music history, Steve Cropper agreed to listen to Otis Redding sing.