Rhino Factoids: Otis Goes Gold

48 years ago today, Otis Redding earned the first gold record of his career, which also proved to be the only gold record of his career, owing predominantly to the fact that he’d been killed in a plane crash three months earlier.

There’s no telling how far Redding might’ve gone if he’d lived, but given that “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” was so successful that it became the first posthumous #1 record on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B charts, it’s easy to imagine him being as much of an icon as Aretha Franklin is today. Oh, sure, you could argue that the biggest reason the song was such a big hit was because of Redding’s death making headlines, but given that Redding’s profile had been higher than ever before that fatal flight, there’s just as much reason to believe that it still would’ve been a major smash.

In the end, “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” sold over four million copies worldwide – it was also a UK #1 hit – and won two Grammy Awards: Best R&B Song and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance. The song also went on to be a hit single for King Curtis, Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66, Sammy Hagar, Michael Bolton, and The Reddings, a band which featured two of Otis’s sons: Dexter and Otis III. All of these accomplishments are great, but they’re all tempered by the realization that it would’ve been so much better if Otis could’ve been here to experience them himself.