“He said, ‘Well, I’m going to change my style, going to be different.’” “My comment at the time was that it was very different, unusual for him,” she told the New York Times. Though, when he played the song for her, she reportedly didn’t care for it. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” as an influence to push his songwriting to a new level of creativity. And I was looking at the times change.”Īlthough “The Dock of the Bay” is now synonymous with Redding, it was a departure from both his fiery soul stompers like “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and softer ballads like “Try A Little Tenderness.” His wife, Zelma Atwood, cited The Beatles’ “Sgt. "We must have been out there three or four days before I could get any concept as to where he was going with the song,” said Sims, as reported by Performing Songwriter.
Redding’s manager, Earl “Speedo” Sims, said that while staying at the houseboat, the singer had the genesis for “The Dock of the Bay.” He would repeat the lines “sittin’ in the morning sun, I’ll be sittin’ when the evening comes” over and over, and later add a direct mention of San Francisco in the second verse (“I left my home in Georgia / Headed for the Frisco Bay”). Soul singer Otis Redding passionately sings with his horn section behind him as he performs onstage in 1967. To offer an escape, promoter Bill Graham reportedly offered the keys to his houseboat. Redding was at the height of his popularity, hot off a legendary performance at the Monterey Pop Festival, so a legion of female fans had descended on his hotel. According to an NPR interview with his guitarist, Steve Cropper, Redding began writing the song when he played at the Fillmore West in December 1966, but most accounts line up his time in Sausalito with a six-night string of shows at the jazz club Basin Street West in North Beach in August 1967. Legend has it that the dock where he watched the tide roll away was right here in Sausalito. But he never had the chance, dying in a tragic plane crash just days after the recording session in 1967 at the age of 26.Ī view of part of the houseboat community in Sausalito, Calif., in the late 1960s. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and today, it has nearly 350 million plays on Spotify alone, more than double Redding's second-most popular song, “Stand by Me.” The iconic whistling at the end was originally intended as a placeholder, which the singer planned to re-record in a final version. Recorded in late 1967 and released in 1968, it jumped to No. “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” is inarguably Otis Redding’s biggest hit. And at least one of them claims to have seen it being written, 54 years ago. I doubt the sound carried to the rows of houseboats on either side, but almost every resident of the 282 floating homes at these docks would’ve known the song. Something like a seagull squawked in the distance while I whistled a little tune. Under the clear skies of a Sunday afternoon, I took a seat at a wooden lookout point along the water. But next to the colorful bungalows and rusty barges, floating modern mansions remind you this is indeed 2021.
The pastel paint jobs and streamers hanging from balconies invokes a festive New Orleans vibe. There’s a little stand outside one boat selling art postcards on the honor system. A longboarder in wraparound sunglasses skates down the dock to his houseboat, pulled by his leashed golden retriever. In some ways, time feels frozen at Waldo Point Harbor in Sausalito. A view from a lookout point at the Waldo Point Harbor in Sausalito, Calif., where Otis Redding conceived the song "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay." Dan Gentile