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OTIS! THE OTIS REDDING STORY
Scott Freeman
(St. Martin's Press)
At the conclusion of OTIS! The Otis Redding Story, one of author Scott Freeman's interviewees notes what a shame it was that no one has written an Otis Redding biography before. He's right. Otis Redding's biography reads like a Hollywood screenplay (hint hint to anyone with movie connections): Redding's rise from the tough streets of Macon, Georgia to become an R&B legend is intertwined with the success story of Stax Records, as well as the civil rights movement erupting violently across the South.

A sharecropping family, the Reddings left their dead-end existence in 1942 for Macon, a city where the grudgingly "separate but equal" mindset meant that blacks could find work and manage some semblance of a respectable life. From the earliest moments he could talk, Otis sang incessantly. Starting with the church choir and talent contests, Otis graduated to performing with local ensembles, knocking audiences dead with his feverish covers of Little Richard (also a Macon local).

Otis was singing in a prominent Macon band called the Pinetoppers when guitarist Johnny Jenkins began to turn some heads with an instrumental called "Love Twist." Atlantic Records took out an option on Jenkins, sending him to Memphis' Stax Studio to record some songs. Otis went along, and when the session ended early, he and members of Stax house band Booker T and the MGs recorded "These Arms of Mine." The song was a moderate R&B hit, and Otis began a relationship with Stax records that would lay the groundwork for Southern soul.

As Otis' hits kept coming, he ventured across the globe, playing the U.S. and Europe in front of rapt audiences. Going on gut instinct and ambition, he began to include shows at predominantly white venues such as the Fillmore Auditorium. He also thrilled what he called the "love crowd" at the Monterey International Pop Festival on June 17, 1967. Back in Macon, Otis couldn't even get takeout barbecue from a whites-only restaurant.

Scott Freeman's biography of Otis Redding is thorough and flawlessly written, with nary an awkward assumption nor an unnecessary embellishment. He interviewed countless Redding friends and musicians. At times the names become something of a blur, though it's hard to imagine that any should have been left out; Otis was outgoing and well-liked in Macon, and he was connected throughout the black music community. If Freeman is guilty of one thing, it's loving his subject too much. The issues of extramarital dalliances and casual drug use are noted but not examined. Instead, the emphasis is on the man and his art, plain and simple. Otis and Stax were known to step on a few people on their way to the top; many people legitimately claim to have written or co-written some of his hits, only to be denied credit and royalties. Some were bitter, even going so far as to suggest that Redding's death in a plane crash on December 10, 1967 was due to some sort of karmic debt. Many, though, loved Otis enough that they believed his uncanny arranging and singing ability made hits of material that wouldn't have fared so well for them anyway.

And it's this sort of manifest destiny theme that emerges from Freeman's pages. From the earliest days when young Otis broke his father's heart with rebellious forays into nightclubs, to his instinctive belief in what would be his last (and biggest) song, "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay," he followed his own path. If Scott Freeman loves Otis Redding too much, it's hard to blame him. Brian Briscoe [buy it]