Released just a few weeks after his death, the song shot to Number One on the Pop and R&B charts, eventually winning Redding a pair of posthumous Grammy awards. But before Redding got the chance to explore his new direction, he was killed, along with most of his backup band the Bar-Kays, in a plane crash while on tour. Thus, the call to Taylor.When Otis Redding recorded "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" in late 1967, the singer knew that the song was a milestone in his creative evolution. So the story goes, a grief-filled Cropper returned to the studio to edit the song, heard the whistle outro again, and thought it fit perfect with the fade-out but needed and overdub. Presumably, when he was to get back from his trip to Wisconsin, him and Cropper were going to finish it up. Otis just finished up the song with a whistle as a placeholder because he had nothing else left to add. Otis Redding did originally come up with a whistle for the end of the song.Īccording to Steve Cropper, Redding was still pondering adding a 4th verse to “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” or lyrics to an outro. During his truly colorful career, Taylor worked with, rubbed elbows, got breaks for, and influenced a number of popular acts in the 1960s, ’70s. Sam Taylor was a career singer-songwriter, guitarist, and session musician. That whistle came from Sam Bluzman Taylor. A song that was truly greater than one’s self.Īs we know, that song was Otis Redding‘s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” Most music historians would point out that Otis Redding never got to hear the final version of the song song with Steve Cropper’s electric guitar overdubs.Ĭropper was waiting for Redding to hear after returning from his now-fateful gig in Madison, WI.īut as sad as that is to hear, what perhaps is the saddest aspect of “Dock of the Bay’s” history is that the iconic whistle which outros the song is not Otis Redding’s. A song so beautiful and well-crafted that it would take more than one person to finish it. A song so great it would take his lifetime to discover it. Once upon a time, the greatest soul singer in the world wrote the greatest song the world would ever know.
“The whistle at the end of “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” belongs to longtime musician Sam “Bluzman” Taylor, who was brought in to finish the final overdubs.
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