Watching the tide roll away

A reporter for the SF Gate out in San Francisco was wandering around  Waldo Point Harbor in Sausalito recently, checking out a hunch.

From the story he wrote, I glean that Sausalito is one of those waterfront areas, a bayside version of our Hampden, where bohemians and bon vivants have long dwelled, but recently it's become the hip thing to move there, and suddenly housing prices are shooting skyward. 

And out there, when you talk about housing, a lot of where people live is on houseboats docked along Richardson Bay. A lot of returning GIs pitched their tents there, as it were, after World War II, and never quite got around to moving. 

Today there are 282 floating homes, and one great memory to tell you about.

Otis Redding, the great soul singer of the 1960s, came from Macon, Georgia and was a member of Little Richard's band at age 15. By his early 20s, he was driving the bus and singing onstage for Johnny Jenkins And The Pinetoppers. A break came his way when some recording time was available in a studio where Jenkins was cutting a record. Otis took that chance and recorded his first hit - "These Arms Of Mine."

Otis Redding

Redding's first records after that were hits on the soul chart, but his appeal was broad, and between 1964 and 1967 he had hits on the chart such as "Mr. Pitiful," "That's How Strong My Love Is," "I've Been Loving You Too Long," "I Can't Turn You Loose,"  his version of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)," "Try a Little Tenderness," and his version of Sam Cooke's "Shake."

That's a string of hits, but by 1966, Otis saw changes ahead in the music world and he wanted to broaden his style past the soul stompers and into folk-type ballads, done his way. He performed in 1966 at the Fillmore West, a rock music palace in San Francisco, and was held in high regard by the - the word must be used - hippies in the crowd. From there to the Monterey Pop Festival in summer of '67, Otis was moving, not so much away from his gospel-flavored soul, but adding rock and pop to it. 

After that appearance at Monterey, Redding needed some down time and legendary Fillmore promoter Bill Graham gave him the use of his houseboat on the Sausalito harbor.

This is the dock of the bay that inspired the song.

It was while staying on the boat and walking along the harborside that Redding missed his home in Georgia and began writing about it. Earl “Speedo” Sims, Otis's manager, heard him singing to himself the lines “sittin’ in the morning sun, I’ll be sittin’ when the evening comes” and add “I left my home in Georgia / Headed for the Frisco Bay” as the second verse.

Of course, the song he wrote was “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” his biggest hit, but sadly a posthumous one. He was in a hurry to get back on the road when he made the demo version of it in December, 1967, which is also the month that saw him lose his life in a plane crash at age 26.  The single was almost instantly a #1 hit after its release in January of '68, and is always on the list of top songs of the decade. 

And just so you know the rest of the story...listen to it here.  At the end, Otis whistles, and that is one part of the record that makes it so haunting to hear again. 

BUT - he didn't mean for the record to sound like that. What the record company put out was an incomplete, early version of his song. Otis did not finish writing the words just the way he wanted to, so he whistled at the end in the demo version, with the intent to go back and record a final version after the tour he did not survive.

And now you know etc etc.