Jason Webster

In 1967, Otis Redding finished recording the song "Sittin On The Dock Of The Bay" in Memphis, TN. Tragically, 72 hours later he died in a plane crash at the age of 26. When the phone rang at the Stax/Volt studios in Memphis in late November of 1967, guitarist Steve Cropper was surprised to hear Otis Redding on the other end, calling from the airport. "Usually Otis would check into the Holiday Inn or whatever hotel he was staying at and then he'd call for me to come over and do some writing," Cropper recalls. But this time Redding was too excited to wait. "I've got a hit," he told Cropper, so he wanted to come straight to the studio to flesh his idea out into a full-fledged song. Redding started writing the lyrics to the song in August 1967, while sitting on a rented houseboat in Sausalito, California. He completed the song in Memphis with the help of Cropper, who was a Stax producer and the guitarist for Booker T. & the M.G's. Redding was right. When "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay" was released less than two months later, it became the singer's first million-seller and first 'Billboard' Number One single. But the legendary soul singer never got to hear the finished version of his breakthrough single: He had died in a plane crash on December 10th at the age of 26.