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(Sittin On) The Dock of the Bay

"(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay"
Dockofthebay.jpg
Single by Otis Redding
from the album The Dock of the Bay
B-side
  • "Sweet Lorene" (Volt issue)
  • "Keep Your Arms Around Me" (Atco reissue)
Released January 8, 1968
Format Vinyl record
Recorded November 22 and December 7, 1967, Stax Studios, Memphis, Tennessee
Genre
Length 2:38
Label
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s) Steve Cropper
Otis Redding singles chronology
"Knock on Wood"
(1967)
"(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay"
(1968)
"The Happy Song (Dum Dum)"
(1968)
"Knock on Wood"
(1967)
"(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay"
(1968)
"The Happy Song (Dum Dum)"
(1968)
Music video
"(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay" on YouTube
"(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay"
Sammy Hagar - (Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay single front cover.jpg
7" single cover
Single by Sammy Hagar
B-side "I've Done Everything for You"
Released 1979
Format 7" single
Recorded May 1979
Genre Rock
Length 3:03
Label Capitol
Songwriter(s)
  • Steve Cropper
  • Otis Redding
Producer(s) Carter
"(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay"
Michael Bolton - (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay.jpg
7" single cover
Single by Michael Bolton
B-side "Call My Name"
Released 1987
Format 7" single
Genre
Length 3:50
Label Columbia
Songwriter(s)
  • Steve Cropper
  • Otis Redding
Producer(s)
  • Jonathan Cain
  • Keith Diamond
  • Susan Hamilton

"(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" is a song co-written by soul singer Otis Redding and guitarist Steve Cropper. It was recorded by Redding twice in 1967, including once just days before his death in a plane crash. The song was released on Stax Records' Volt label in 1968, becoming the first posthumous single to top the charts in the US. It reached number 3 on the UK Singles Chart.

Redding started writing the lyrics to the song in August 1967, while sitting on a rented houseboat in Sausalito, California. He completed the song with the help of Cropper, who was a Stax producer and the guitarist for Booker T. & the M.G.'s. The song features whistling and sounds of waves crashing on a shore.

While on tour with the Bar-Kays in August 1967, Redding wrote the first verse of the song, under the abbreviated title "Dock of the Bay," on a houseboat at Waldo Point in Sausalito, California. He had completed his famed performance at the Monterey Pop Festival just weeks earlier. While touring in support of the albums King & Queen (a collaboration with female vocalist Carla Thomas) and Live in Europe, he continued to scribble lines of the song on napkins and hotel paper. In November of that year, he joined producer and guitarist Steve Cropper at the Stax recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee, to record the song.

In a September 1990 interview on NPR's Fresh Air, Cropper explained the origins of the song:

Otis was one of those the kind of guy who had 100 ideas. [...] He had been in San Francisco doing The Fillmore. And the story that I got he was renting boathouse or stayed at a boathouse or something and that's where he got the idea of the ships coming in the bay there. And that's about all he had: "I watch the ships come in and I watch them roll away again." I just took that... and I finished the lyrics. If you listen to the songs I collaborated with Otis, most of the lyrics are about him. [...] Otis didn't really write about himself but I did. Songs like "Mr. Pitiful," "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)"; they were about Otis and 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.


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Wikipedia

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