Otis Redding

Otis Redding came out of Macon, Georgia — Little Richard’s city — and found his home at Stax Records in Memphis, where the integrated house band Booker T. & the MGs gave his gospel-drenched shouts a tight, horn-powered frame. From 1962 until his death in a plane crash in December 1967, he was the defining voice of Southern soul: harder-edged, more church-raw, more physically urgent than Motown’s polished sound.

“These Arms of Mine,” “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” “Try a Little Tenderness,” and his galvanizing performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival — playing to a rock audience that had barely heard of him — made him the ambassador of Stax to the wider world. The posthumously released “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” (1968), his most restrained and atmospheric recording, became his biggest pop hit.

He was 26 when he died. In this graph he is the anchor of the southern-soul node: the counterpoint to Motown, rooted in the Mississippi Delta’s directness, pointing toward the gritty R&B and funk that followed.