rock ballads    One of my favorite love ballads recorders of all time.

Though his career was cut short by a tragic plane crash, Otis Redding was a rock ballads singer of such commanding stature that to this day he embodies the essence of soul music in its purist form. His name is synonymous with the term soul, monster ballads that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying. Redding left behind a legacy of recordings made during the four-year period from his first sessions for Stax/Volt Records in 1963 until his death in 1967. The landmark song, (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay, recorded just four days before Redding’ s death, went to #1 and stayed there for four weeks in early 1968.

Redding’ s unspectacular showing on the pop charts at a time when he was singing some of the most titanic soul/rock ballads ever recorded - classic rock ballads like “Respect” (a song he wrote, later covered by ), “Try a Little Tenderness” and his terse, deconstruction of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” , could mean that he was too intensely soulful for the mainstream market at that time. Redding was a proudly self-professed country boy from Macon, Georgia, who had it all: a big, gravely voice, an enormous natural talent for song writing and arranging, and a hard-working nature and generous disposition