In a 1990 interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” (thank you Terry Gross), co-writer and instrumentalist Steve Cropper provided some background:

“Otis was one of those kind of guys who had 100 ideas… He had been at San Francisco playing The Fillmore, and [was staying in a houseboat] which is where he got the idea of the ships coming in. That’s about all he had: “I watch the ships come in and I watch them roll away again.” I took that and finished the lyrics. If you listen to the songs I wrote with Otis, most of the lyrics are about him. He didn’t usually write about himself, but I did. “Mr. Pitiful”, “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)”; they were about Otis’ life. “Dock of The Bay” was exactly that: “I left my home in Georgia, headed for the Frisco Bay” was all about him going out to San Francisco to perform.”

Otis, of course, was 26 year-old Otis Ray Redding Jr., “The Mad Man from Macon,” songwriter, producer, arranger, soul singer extraordinaire and (“These Arms of Mine”, “Try a Little Tenderness” “A Change is Gonna Come”) one of the great figures in Soul, R&B and popular music in general. It was early December of 1967 when he and Cropper completed the recording of that song and Redding was riding high.

Only a few months earlier he had crossed over from his traditionally black fan base to perform at Monterey Pop, backed by Booker T. & the M.G.’s (including guitarist Cropper) and the Mar-Keys horn section. By all accounts the “Summer of Love” audience was captivated.  When Redding closed with “Try a Little Tenderness” his final line as he left the stage, with the crowd pleading for more, was “I got to go, y’all, I don’t wanna go.”

Although others in Stax Record’s Memphis recording studio were skeptical when they heard the playback, Redding is said to have been pleased with the song conceived on that houseboat at Sausalito’s Waldo Point. It represented a change in style that he liked. Sadly, he would never know what the rest of the world thought.

Three days after whistling those concluding notes (and a day before the anniversary of Sam Cooke’s death) Otis Redding, his manager and five band members were killed when his chartered Beechcraft H18 crashed into a lake outside Madison, Wisconsin where they were to perform the next day (intriguingly the opening act was to be “The Grim Reapers” led by guitarist, Rick Nielsen who would later form Cheap Trick).

“(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” was hurriedly released within weeks, in January 1968, predictably rocketing to Number One on the R&B charts.  A little less predictably it also owned the Pop charts, remaining at Number One for four weeks and becoming the first posthumous single ever to top the Billboard charts. It would go on to win Grammy Awards for Best R&B Song and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance.

An album that (naturally) shared the song’s title soon followed, charting at Number 3 in the UK (Number 4 in the U.S.) and quickly became Redding’s best selling record, with more than four million copies sold worldwide.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Thursday 8 November

The Dock Of The Bay

Sittin’ in the mornin’ sun

I’ll be sittin’ when the evenin’ come

Watching the ships roll in

And then I watch ’em roll away again, yeah

I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

Ooo, I’m just sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Wastin’ time

I left my home in Georgia

Headed for the ‘Frisco bay

‘Cause I’ve had nothing to live for

And look like nothin’s gonna come my way

So I’m just gonna sit on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

Ooo, I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Wastin’ time

Look like nothing’s gonna change

Everything still remains the same

I can’t do what ten people tell me to do

So I guess I’ll remain the same, yes

Sittin’ here resting my bones

And this loneliness won’t leave me alone

It’s two thousand miles I roamed

Just to make this dock my home

Now, I’m just gonna sit at the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

Oooo-wee, sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Wastin’ time

(whistle)

Timeless sentiments, Oscar winning song, just right for the day-after-an-election.  Still, it’s a shame the movie hasn’t aged all that well. Twenty-three year-old Maureen McGovern was a secretary who performed on occasion with a local folk band near Youngstown, Ohio when, in the spring of 1972, she received a call from the head of 20^th Century Records.  He had heard a demo of her singing and decided to hire her, sight-unseen, to record the theme song for the soundtrack release of 20^th Century Fox’s latest action-adventure film, “The Poseidon Adventure”.

Written by Brill Building-based Al Kasha (who was once responsible for signing Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead to publishing contracts) and Joel Hirschord (who later wrote “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Songwriting”), the two men were given a single night to come up with a “love-theme.”  Performed in the film by actress Carol Lynley using a vocal double, McGovern’s recording sold over a million copies and topped the Billboard Charts, while garnering the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

The following year McGovern, Kasha and Hirschord teamed up once more to record yet another Oscar winning song, “We May Never Love Like This Again” for the highest grossing film of 1974, that cautionary tale about the hazards of cheap wiring and big egos, “The Towering Inferno”.

LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Wednesday 7 November 

Morning After

There’s got to be a morning after

If we can hold on through the night

We have a chance to find the sunshine

Let’s keep on lookin’ for the light

Oh, can’t you see the morning after

It’s waiting right outside the storm

Why don’t we cross the bridge together

And find a place that’s safe and warm

It’s not too late, we should be giving

Only with love can we climb

It’s not too late, not while we’re living

Let’s put our hands out in time

There’s got to be a morning after

We’re moving closer to the shore

I know we’ll be there by tomorrow

And we’ll escape the darkness

We won’t be searchin’ any more

There’s got to be a morning after…

The big storm has come and gone through Narragansett Bay and this weekend promises to be a fine one in the charming city of Newport where my niece’s much-anticipated early November wedding is thankfully slated to proceed pretty much on schedule.

Fittingly for such a social occasion, early November once marked the beginning of le Train Bleu season (in the 1920s and ‘30s), when many a shivering socialite escaped the raw British weather to bask on the French Rivera.  After taking the club train from Victoria Station to Dover and enduring the ferry crossing to Calais, the likes of Coco Chanel, Somerset Maugham, the Prince of Wales (and the erstwhile Mrs. Simpson), Winston Churchill, Evelyn Waugh, Charlie Chaplin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, etc., would then board the Calais-Mediterranée Express, known colloquially as the Blue Train (“le Train Bleu”) in light of its (all first-class) dark blue sleeping cars.

Soon the mainly Mayfair contingent would find itself firmly ensconced on the Riviera in a “frantic, addleheaded search for amusement” that invariably led to many a “marvelous” party.  A prominent fixture of Le Train Bleu Society was most assuredly English playwright, actor, composer and singer, Noel Coward who wrote today’s selection after he and his good friend Beatrice Lille attended a beach party given by American gossip columnist, Elsa Maxwell.

First performed by Lillie in Coward’s revue “Set to Music” in 1939 it would later become a part of his celebrated 1950s cabaret act, with many of the lyrics reflecting actual experiences.  For example, Coward and Lillie were apparently invited to “come as they were” but upon arrival they discovered that the other guests were all formally dressed, which explains why it was “Hell” to stay as they were, while “Poor Grace” refers to renowned opera singer Grace Moore, who was also a guest at the party.

Coward wrote and recorded nearly 300 songs, and this wry reflection on how “people’s behaviour away from Belgravia would make you aghast…” is one of the most enduring.

 LISTEN TO TODAY’S SELECTION – Friday 2 November

I’ve Been to a Marvelous Party

Quite for no reason

I’m here for “the season”

And high as a kite

Living in error

With Maud at Cap Ferret

Which couldn’t be right

Everyone’s here and frightfully gay

Nobody cares what people say

Though the Riviera

Seems really much queerer

Than Rome at its height

On Wednesday night…

I went to a marvelous party

With Nounou and Nada and Nell

It was in the fresh air

And we went as we were

And we stayed as we were

Which was Hell

Poor Grace started singing at midnight

And didn’t stop singing till four

We knew the excitement was bound to begin

When Laura got blind on Dubbonet and gin

And scratched her veneer with a Cartier pin

I couldn’t have liked it more…

I’ve been to a marvelous party

We played the most wonderful game

Maureen disappeared and came back in a beard

And we all had to guess at her name…

Old Cecil arrived wearing armour

Some shells and a black feather boa

Poor Millicent wore a surrealist comb

Made of bits of mosaic from St. Peter’s in Rome

But the weight was so great that she had to go home

I couldn’t have liked it more…

People’s behaviour

Away from Belgravia

Would make you aghast

So much variety

Watching society

Scampering past

If you have any mind at all

Gibbon’s divine “Decline and Fall”

Sounds pretty flimsy

No more than a whimsy

By way of contrast

On Wednesday last…

I’ve been to a marvelous party

I must say the fun was intense

We all had to do

What the people we knew

Might be doing a hundred years hence

We talked about growing old gracefully

And Elsie, who’s seventy-four

Said, A, it’s a question of being sincere

And B, if you’re supple you’ve noting to fear

Then she swung upside down from a glass chandelier

I couldn’t have liked it more

I’ve been to a marvelous party

We didn’t start dinner till ten

And young Bobbie Carr

Did a stunt at the bar

With a lot of extraordinary men

Poor Frieda arrived with a turtle

Which shattered us all to the core

The Duchess passed out at a quarter to three

And suddenly Cyril screamed “Fiddle-dee-dee!”

And ripped off his trousers and jumped in the sea

I couldn’t have liked it more

I’ve been to a marvelous party

Elise made an entrance…with May

You’d never have guessed

From her fisherman’s vest

That her bust had been whittled away

Poor Lulu got fried on Chianti

And talked about esprit de corps

Louise made a couple of passes at Gus

And Freddie, who hates any kind of a fuss

Did half the Big Apple and twisted his truss

I couldn’t have liked it more