It also won two Grammy Awards: Best R&B Song and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. It became Redding's most successful record worldwide, selling over four million copies. The track became the first ever posthumous #1 single in the US. The song topped the US chart in March 1968, and its album Dock of the Bay became his largest-selling so far.

'(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay' was released in January 1968, soon after Redding's death. He added the sound of seagulls and waves to the background, as Redding had requested. He was aged just 26.Īfter Redding's death, Cropper mixed finished the song at Stax Studios. On December 10, just days after recording the song, his plane crashed into Lake Monona, outside Madison, Wisconsin. He forgot what it was so he started whistling.' Cropper said Redding had 'this little fadeout rap he was gonna do, an ad-lib. The song features a whistled tune before fading away. Otis Redding didn't think the song was ready, but sadly he never got the chance to finish it in the way he had hoped. Otis Redding died soon after recording the song.There had been concerns from his record company that 'Dock of the Bay' was too poppy for an Otis Redding song, and there was talk of gospel act the Staple Singers singing backing vocals. While discussing the song with his wife, Redding stated that was looking to 'be a little different', and 'change his style'. 'Dock of the Bay' was exactly that: 'I left my home in Georgia, headed for the Frisco Bay' was all about him going out to San Francisco to perform.' Pitiful', 'Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)' they were about Otis and Otis' life. 'Otis didn't really write about himself but I did. If you listen to the songs I collaborated with Otis, most of the lyrics are about him. ''I watch the ships come in and I watch them roll away again'. The story that I got he was renting boathouse or stayed at a boathouse or something and that's where he got the idea of the ships coming in the bay there. In 1990, Cropper said of the song's creation: 'Otis was one of those the kind of guys who had 100 ideas.

The dock of the bay lyrics