Love Man
He sang with the soul of an old sage, but Otis Redding didn’t live to see his 27th birthday. Less than two weeks before Christmas in 1967, Redding was killed in a plane crash in rural Wisconsin, along with his manager, three bandmates and the plane’s pilot. Just months before the fatal crash, Redding introduced songs like “Try a Little Tenderness” and “These Arms of Mine” to an entirely new fan base at the Monterey Pop Festival, a California concert that would inspire Woodstock two years later. But it was the posthumously released “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” a bittersweet ballad recorded just three days before his death, that became Redding’s first and only No. 1 single. In the three years following his death, his record company released three albums — The Immortal Otis Redding, Love Man, and Tell the Truth — all of which produced a spate of hits, including “Hard to Handle” and “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember.” In 1989 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
