Otis Redding

April 10, 2017
Drawing on interviews with Otis Redding’s widow, Zelma, as well as interviews with Redding’s family, friends, and musical associates, Gould (Can’t Buy Me Love) brings tedious detail to the well-known story of Redding’s life and music. Gould begins with a tour of Southern history to illustrate, unsurprisingly, that Redding’s music reached across racial borders in a racially divided world. When Gould focuses on Redding’s music, the book comes alive, and he traces that music year by year from the singer’s early gospel influences, his early emulation of Little Richard, and his association with manager Phil Walden to his rise to fame at Stax, his energetic shows at the Apollo and the Fillmore West, and his career-defining show at Monterey Pop a few months before his death. Despite Redding’s growing popularity, his ambition, and the raw power he displayed onstage, he frequently displayed insecurity about his own abilities; Gould points out that the singer’s refusal to record his own version of Bob Dylan’s “Just Like a Woman” illustrates not only Redding’s insistence that lyrics didn’t matter but also his defensiveness and anxiety. Gould’s often exhausting study, never sure whether it wants to be music history, social history, or biography, treads over territory already well covered by others.

Starred review from April 1, 2017
A music biography with the depth to do its subject justice.Otis Redding (1941-1967) ranks high in the pantheon of 1960s musical luminaries, so it's fitting that this biography ranks equally high among such work focusing on popular musical artists. With full cooperation from Redding's widow and family, along with many involved in his management, his music, and his recording and touring career, Gould (Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America, 2007), a former professional musician, illuminates the life and work of an artist who flourished during an era when the mainstream press gave scant attention to soul singers and the emerging rock press was just beginning to come to terms with Redding's music. In fact, following the plane crash that took the life of the 26-year-old in December 1967, "Otis's death inspired an outpouring of publicity that far exceeded the sum of what was written about him during his life." Gould also provides deep context regarding the racial relations and politics that informed Redding's progression from high school dropout and Little Richard imitator to the artist whose achievement gave Stax Records its distinctive identity and whose galvanizing performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival suggested even greater things to come. Rock impresario Bill Graham, who presented Redding for the rock crowd at his Fillmore West, said "in terms of all the people I've seen on stage since then...[Otis] hasn't been equaled. There's nothing close." Yet just months after his coronation at Monterey, Redding was dead, a victim of wintry Midwest conditions and an inexperienced pilot. He left behind a posthumous masterpiece, "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay," that sounded like nothing he had previously recorded and seemed to indicate not only artistic growth, but a change in direction. Better late than never, the soul master receives his considerable due in this superbly researched and written biography.

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Starred review from April 15, 2017

In this long-overdue work, musician and author Gould (Can't Buy Me Love) scores a big hit of his own with an excellent and definitive biography of Sixties soul icon Otis Redding (1941-67). A master storyteller, Gould tackles Redding's life by planting his flag firmly at the crossroads of individual genius and social and cultural context. From his roots as the son of a Georgia sharecropper through his early gospel performances and into stardom at Stax Records, Redding's trajectory would take him to the top of the charts, surrounded by the most famous entertainers of the age. His performances culminated in a historic Saturday night closing set at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967. Six months later, he would perish in a plane crash. One month after that, "(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay" would be released and become the first posthumous No. 1 single in U.S. music chart history. The artist left us way too soon; Gould's fabulous portrait brings him back to life. VERDICT Finally, a book that provides Redding with the "Respect" he richly deserves. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 12/5/16.]--Bill Baars, Lake Oswego P.L., OR

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2017
There have been several biographies of the great soul singer and composer Redding, including Mark Ribowsky's notable Dreams to Remember (2015), but this one makes its own contribution. As he did with the Beatles in his acclaimed Can't Buy Me Love (2007), Gould puts Redding's life into its social and political context, seeing the intersection of the man, the times, the church, race, and gospel music as paramount and offering a nuanced and well-researched examination of all these factors as they played out in the midcentury South. Throw in a capable survey of influencesLouis Jordan, Little Richard (like Redding, a native of Macon, Georgia), and, somewhat later, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, and James Brown. The more mature Redding, Gould points out, took advantage of these precursors' traits and supplemented them with his own style and enormous talent. Redding's own story gets a bit lost in Gould's emphasis on the history and the music (Ribowsky is better on the personal side), but this account still belongs in the hands of anyone who cares about soul music in the sixties.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)