Today, if not for a tragic aviation accident, Otis Redding might still be with us and celebrating his 84th birthday.
Born on this day in 1941, the soul singer nicknamed the “King of Soul” is recognised as one of the most powerful singers of his time and has posthumously been inducted into multiple Halls of Fame, including the Georgia Music, Songwriters, and Rock and Roll.
It was on one fateful day in 1967 that the soul icon would meet his untimely end in an aeroplane crash at just 26 years old, only days after recording a version of his hit '(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay'.
While the track is one of his biggest hits and a soul classic, another popped up on our radar today.
Let’s take it back to Redding’s 1965 ‘Otis Blue’, an album in which he blessed us with his version of The Rolling Stones' ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’.
It was a cover so good that Keith Richards himself admitted Redding’s version was better and more in line with how he’d first imagined the song.
Richards told Guitar World: "The way Otis Redding ended up doing it is probably closer to my original conception for the song. Otis got it right. Our version was a demo for [his version]."
Listen below
The story goes that the original ‘Stones version, released just a few months earlier on June 4th, was written in Keith Richards' sleep.
The way he envisioned it, the riff was better suited to a horn section - as Otis later did - but Richards had to make do with a fuzz-tone distortion effect on one of their guitar recordings to try and emulate this.
"This was just a little sketch, because, to my mind, the fuzz tone was really there to denote what the horns would be doing”
As well as adding horns, Redding put his own twist on the track by reworking the lyrics.
Redding was often quoted as saying, “I use a lot of different words than the Stones’ version. That’s because I made them up.”
Steve Cropper, the Stax Records guitarist who worked with Redding on the song, had attempted, and failed, to transcribe the lyrics.
He told Rolling Stone: “If you ever listened to the [original] record, you can hardly understand the lyrics, right?"
"I sat down to a record player, copied down what I thought the lyrics were, and handed Otis a piece of paper, and before we got through with the cut, he threw the paper on the floor, and that was it."
Why did he record a variation of the song? Well, there doesn't really need to be a reason.
It’s great music and that’s enough. Although it is thought that this was Redding's way of saying thank you to the Stones for covering his songs on their ‘Out of Our Heads’ album.
Either way, we’re glad it exists.
Cheers, Otis, for a brilliant cover and many other wonderful songs.
