Here Is a Printable

Originally appeared in Razorcake #48, Feb/March 2009 Original layout by Todd Taylor Adapted for zine by Matthew Hart The Slightest Suggestion in a River of Diversions n what follows, I’m not saying in any way, shape, or form that Otis Redding was a punk. He wasn’t a punk archetype Ifor Bad Brains, a missing link, anything of the sort, but he’s a wellspring of fantastic music. I think he’s a great musician; one that—in the very system of major labels now—can’t and won’t be replicated. He was as much a man as a time (the late ‘50s to late ‘60s) and a place (the South, pre Martin Luther King Jr. assassination). Inauspiciously enough, the first time that the music I was hear- ing was attached to the name Otis Redding, I was sitting on the linoleum floor of a Pic’n’Save. I remember playing with some multi-colored army men that had previously been pulled out of their wrappers. I was nine. I remembered the seagull sounds at the beginning of a song while really wanting a gun that sparked at the barrel when I repeatedly pulled the trigger. A couple years later, I remembered the same song playing on TV. It had been retooled as a jingle for a root beer: “Sippin’ My Hires All Day.” Otis and I briefly crossed paths again in 1986, when I felt a more than passing affinity for Jon Cryer’s character, Duckie, in Pretty in Pink. In one scene, Duckie busted into the record store that Andie, played by Molly Ringwald, was working in and put his whole body into lip-synching along to “Try a Little Tenderness.” Although the red-haired girl was unimpressed by Duckie’s performance, I was intrigued. But, instead of looking further into Otis, I bought the soundtrack to the movie. The title song by the Psychedelic Furs had grabbed my attention more. I’m sure that I heard more Otis songs over the years, but never meaningfully, never in context. It wasn’t until 1997 that my obsession began in earnest. It was piqued by one song: “Doublewhiskeycoke- noice.” Dillinger Four, I’ll fully admit, are responsible for a big batch of my life decisions, especially concerning music. (If you think this is an overstatement, I consider D4 as a cornerstone band to Razorcake. If they didn’t exist, we wouldn’t exist in our current form.) When Erik’s higher-pitched voice proclaimed, “God save Otis Redding because I know he’s never gone,” I got down to tracking down some Otis records. Years later, I put together that the sound bite to the beginning of the 1 song—the “Hi, this is the Big O. I was just standing here thinking about you, thought I’d write a song about you, and dedicate it to you. Take a listen”—was taken from an Otis Redding song called “Stay in School.” Musical obsessions can start with the smallest germ, the slightest suggestion in a river of diversions. In the intervening years, I’ve learned to dance marginally better to Otis Redding by paying attention to the drum beat and moving my butt to it instead of following the guitar or the voice. It was also such a treat to be in my friend Greg Pettix’s (formerly of The Weird Lovemakers and currently in The Cuntifiers) house, saying, “Man, I’ve really been getting into Otis Redding,” and seeing Greg pull out an obscure compilation and reply, “Ever hear of the Pinetoppers? No? Then listen to this!” and then everyone in the room did little spontaneous dances to “Shout Bamalama,” a song that seemed just-recorded and fire-crackering from the stereo; not some forty-year-old relic that had to be con- sidered soberly and handled delicately. And I’d be remiss not to mention that my first dance as a married dude with my lovely wife, Mary-Clare, was to Otis singing, “That’s How Strong My Love Is.” So, in the spirit of Otis Redding providing me with hundreds of hours of improved living standards by listening to his music, I present the following: “One Punk’s Guide to Otis Red- ding,” a short biography of the man, his life, and his legacy. Is It Blasphemous to Believe in One’s Own Talent as a Form of Faith? tis Redding, Jr. was born on September 9, 1941 to Otis Red- ding, Sr. and Fannie Roseman Redding, into a family of six Oin the small town of Dawson, Georgia. Dawson is situated in Terrell County, a sleepy little farming community, twenty miles south of Plains, the hometown of Jimmy Carter. The entire local economy revolved around peanuts and cotton. At the age of three, Otis’s family moved 120 miles to Macon, Georgia in a neighborhood called Bellevue into the Tindall Heights Housing Project. It was crowded. More than four hundred apartments were assembled in dense clusters of barracks-style town homes and flats. During this time, Otis received no formal music 2 education. He learned music by singing with the choir of the Vineville Baptist Church. He later participated in the band at Ballard-Hudson, the “Senior High School for Negro Boys and Girls” in Macon. It was then that it became obvious to Otis Jr. that he wanted to be a singer in a band. Otis’s dad was a Baptist minister who preached on the weekends. During the week, he worked as a maintenance worker at nearby Rob- ins Air Force Base. He didn’t like that his son wanted to become a singer and was blunt in his disapproval. “I’m going to tell you something, Otis. You won’t ever amount to anything with this singing, this hanging out at nightclubs, not a thing.” To drive the point home, he ended the discussion with, “And I’m going to tell you something else. Whether you make it or not, I’m never going to see you in one of those places. Nightclubs are outside the limit of God’s realm.” Otis responded to his father in a way most kids do when pre- sented with a challenge in the form of a threat: he mostly ignored his father’s warnings. Otis Jr. knew some things his father probably didn’t put weight in. Although Macon, Georgia was a town with a population of a little more than 160,000 in 1950, there was a much larger chance for an aspiring musician than meets the eye. It was a place with a deep musical well, where many before him had drunk deep of its waters. Music seemed to bubble up from the ground. In the 1840s, a man by the name of Alabama Vest invented the kazoo there. During tenth grade, Otis, Jr., spurred on by a mixture of his own ambition, his love of music, and the driving obligation to financial- ly secure his family’s future after his father had contracted tuber- culosis and lost his job at the air force base, dropped out of school. Otis Sr. still wasn’t impressed. He believed that Otis Jr. had fool- hardy, unrealistic dreams and was risking the family’s well-being. “Otis’s the worst child I have,” Otis Sr. lamented. “He worries me to death because he ain’t never going to amount to nothing.” Otis Jr., although religious and respectful of his father, was prag- matic in realizing his dreams of becoming a singer. He’d seen the blossoms of colossal talent, nurtured with hard labor, bear fruit right in front of him. Macon was home to James Brown and Little Richard. Little Richard was experiencing regional success with his band, The Upsetters. He had even grown up in a neighborhood close to Otis. They both had attended the same high school. If Little Richard, the 3 son of a Macon bootlegger, could make it out of Pleasant Hill and have his song “Long Tall Sally” hit #1 on the R&B national charts in March of 1956, why couldn’t Otis Redding Jr. make it out of Bellevue? In the segregated South, Otis could only find predictably mun- dane, hard labor jobs to support his musical habit. At fifteen years old, his fate was poised to become that of just another black kid from the projects: uneducated, poor, and working manual labor for the rest of his life. He began a pattern of bouncing from job to job. He roofed houses, cleaned yards, dug wells, delivered groceries, and painted fences. One time, he found a job on a construction crew and was put to work operating an air hammer, breaking concrete. Around lunchtime, Otis quit. He later found work in a junkyard. In between these times, Otis Jr. continued pursuing his singing at nearby white colleges and high schools and disabled veterans’ clubs. In 1957, when they were both sixteen, Otis Redding met Zel- ma Atwood. That year, he asked her to marry him. She agreed. In 1958, Otis and Zelma married. They would go on to have three children together: Dexter, Karla, and Otis III. Zelma was a believer in her husband’s talents: “Otis Redding always believed in Otis Redding. He’d tell me, ‘Don’t worry, I’m gon- na make you happy one day,’ and I was like, ‘Lord have mer- cy, we could starve to death!’ That’s just how positive he was.” When DJs Could Play Songs They Liked n between odd jobs, Otis Redding Jr.

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