February 4, 2012

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In Popular Culture

  • William Bell’s song ‘A Tribute to a King’ is completely and evidently dedicated to Otis Redding.
  • Arthur Conley made mention of Otis Redding in his 1967 song “Sweet Soul Music” with the line “Spotlight on Otis Redding now Singing fa fa fa fa…”. (Redding co-authored “Sweet Soul Music” with his protege Conley, and produced the recording.)
  • Beginning with their 1993–1994 performances of the song “Hey Nineteen”, the band Steely Dan replaced the phrase “Hey Nineteen/That’s Aretha Franklin/She don’t remember/Queen of Soul” with “Hey Nineteen/That’s Otis Redding/She don’t remember/King of Soul.” While singing the song in the Two Against Nature tour of 2000, Donald Fagen often left the name attribution blank for the singing-along audiences to fill in, and when most of them sang “Aretha Franklin,” he corrected them by saying, “No, that’s Otis Redding.”
  • Barry Gibb has stated in numerous interviews that the song “To Love Somebody” was written for Otis Redding, but died before he was able to record it.
  • The Doors, fans of Redding, added this verse before “Runnin’ Blue”: “Poor Otis dead and gone, left me here to sing his song. Pretty little girl with the red dress on, Poor Otis dead and gone.” Singer Jim Morrison had been singing those lines on their tour the year before. Morrison also added in the same song the line “Got to find the dock of the bay”, which was the name of Redding’s compilation album ‘The Dock of the Bay’ which was released in 1968.
  • The Grateful Dead frequently covered “Hard To Handle” during their concerts.
  • Jam band Phish has the line, “Pardon me, Doug, is this a picture of Otis Redding?” in their song “I Didn’t Know”.
  • The Righteous Brothers song “Rock and Roll Heaven” features the verse: “Otis brought us all to the dock of the bay”, a tribute to Redding.
  • A likeness of Redding appears as an evil version of himself in Nightmares & Dreamscapes, adapted from Stephen King’s short story You Know They Got a Hell of a Band. Redding is portrayed as a police officer in the town of Rock N Roll Heaven, which is populated by late rock and roll legends.
  • The 1986 film Pretty In Pink featured Duckie (Jon Cryer) dancing and singing along to “Try a Little Tenderness”. He states his admiration for Otis.
  • The 1986 film Top Gun features “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.”
  • The band Okkervil River wrote a song called “Listening to Otis Redding at Home during Christmas” on their album Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You See.
  • The song “Hard to Handle” was covered by The Black Crowes on their 1990 debut album Shake Your Money Maker.
  • Redding’s music was featured in the 1991 film The Commitments, including “Mr Pitiful”, “Try a Little Tenderness”, “Hard to Handle”, and “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember.”
  • In Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity, protagonist Rob Fleming purchases a copy of the 1976 bootleg 45 single “You Left the Water Running.”
  • The 2000 Everclear album Songs from an American Movie, Vol. 1: Learning How to Smile, features a song titled “Otis Redding”, which contains the lyric, “I wish I could sing like Otis Redding, I wish I could play this guitar in tune.”
  • In 2005, a sample from “It’s Too Late” appeared on the track “Gone” from Kanye West.
  • In the 1988 movie Bull Durham, the character Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), sings the wrong words to “Try a Little Tenderness” (thinking the line “young girls, they do get weary” is actually “young girls, they do get woolly”), leading Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) to angrily correct him.
  • In the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, Jennifer Grey’s character “Baby” walks in on a group of resort employees dancing to “Love Man” and she is forever transformed. The song “These Arms of Mine” was also on the soundtrack.
  • In the 1993 film Grumpy Old Men, Jack Lemmon’s character “John”, after making love to Ariel (Ann-Margret), dances around his house to “Love Man.”
  • “My Lover’s Prayer” was featured in “From Where To Eternity”, a season two episode of the TV series The Sopranos.
  • The song “For Your Precious Love” plays during the opening scene of the 2006 French film Tell No One.
  • In the 1985 film Heaven Help Us, two characters dance to “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.”
  • Redding’s version of “White Christmas” was featured in the 2003 film “Love Actually.”
  • The Blues Brothers Band used the song “Can’t Turn You Loose” as their entrance/exit theme for their concerts and the movie.
  • Arthur Conley released a song, “Otis Sleep On” in 1968.
  • Wong Kar Wai’s first feature length English-language film “My Blueberry Nights” (2007) featured Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” several times.
  • Mae West sang “Hard to Handle” in the 1970 film Myra Breckinridge.
  • In 1994, Pearl Jam performed “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.”
  • In John Mayer’s Where the Light Is the intro to his song “Gravity” is Otis’ song Dreams to Remember.
  • In 2007, Guy Sebastian covered three Redding songs on his The Memphis Album: “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”, “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” “Hard to Handle.”
  • De La Soul sample the whistling melody from (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay in their song “Eye Know.”
  • In the Holiday movie “This Christmas” Chris Brown’s character Baby sings Try A Little Tenderness.
  • In the 2000 movie Duets, Todd Woods (Paul Giamatti) and Reggie Kane (Andre Braugher) sing a karaoke duet of “Try A Little Tenderness.”
  • “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” is featured in episode 15 of the fifth season of NCIS (In the Zone).
  • 5 songs by Otis Redding have been released as downloadable content for the rhythm video game Rock Band on February 16th, 2010.
  • In March 2010, Rapper Intuition made a song honoring Otis Redding called “Otis Redding.”
  • Alessi’s Ark has a song entitled “The Robot” in which she states said robot “Doesn’t care for Otis Redding” and “Doesn’t like being at the dock of the bay.”