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On a December night in 1967, Otis Redding was flying in his own small private plane from Cleveland, where he’d just performed, to Madison, where he was slated to appear next. And in every last one of the cases, the songs have taken on whole new meanings after their creators died. In all but two of those cases, those posthumous #1 singles have been the first times that the artists in question topped the charts. The oldest of those posthumously chart-topping artists, John Lennon, was 40 when he died. Just one, Janis Joplin’s heroin overdose, was a result of some long-festering disease. It’s a peculiar form of public mourning, honoring a departed artist by buying and playing a song from that artist as often as possible. And we, as a public, have mourned by taking a song from that artist and pushing it to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. A popular recording artist has died young in some shocking, out-of-nowhere way. It’ll make for a beautiful day on the bay.In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.Īs of right now, it’s happened six times. You’ll pass Alcatraz Island along the way. You can’t even see Sausalito from Pier 32 and vice-versa unless you take a boat. Speaking of the Frisco Bay, the city of San Francisco dedicated a plaque to Otis Redding for “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” You can find it somewhere along Pier 32 at the Brannan Street Wharf Park.īefore you ask, Pier 32 in San Francisco is nowhere near Sausalito, CA. Back in 1967, you didn’t do the Fillmore without Bill Graham.īill Graham’s presence is all over this story. …Or any one of 100,000 things that could have happened.Īdd to that fact that, per Cropper’s “A Fresh Aire” interview, Redding had just finished giving a performance at the Fillmore in San Francisco before sneaking over The Frisco Bay along the Golden Gate bridge and out to the Sausalito houseboat. There’s a chance Gould might have influenced Cropper’s memory, thus the variation from the 1990 interview he gave “A Fresh Aire.” It also could have gone the other way: Cropper could have tipped off Gould during Gould’s biography research. The published dates of the sources are 6 days apart: First the Gould letter, then the Cropper interview. The Marin Scope got the answer from a familiar source, Jonathan Gould, the writer of the definitive Otis Redding biography: “Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life.” Gould emailed in and pointed out that the suggestion to stay on a houseboat was probably Bill Graham’s because of Graham’s fascination with Redding. The Marin Scope, a local newspaper out here, also looked to track it down back in 2010. One of the owners noted to be cautious because of the tourist-trap scenario. I got tipped off to this back in 2015 when Katie and I were on AirBNB looking for houseboats to rent in Sausalito. The second reason is because there are about three Sausalito houseboats out here who claim their boat was where Otis Wrote the timeless classic. We want to get a glimpse into what Otis was seeing and feeling while the lyrics were coming to him. Well, most importantly, we want to know for history’s sake. “Why does it matter which houseboat Otis wrote “Dock of the Bay?“” “And the rest of it, I helped him write it. I remember the fish & chip bar over there.” – Ronnie Wood “He wrote the song, or started it, in Bill Graham’s boathouse in Sausalito.” He also produced the album, “The Dock of the Bay.” Cropper stated the fact while guest appearing on The Rolling Stones Ronnie Wood’s YouTube Channel. I got that answer from Steve Cropper himself, song co-writer and producer. When Otis got back to Memphis, Tennessee, he and Steve Cropper finalized the second and third verses at Stax studios. Otis Redding wrote the first verse of “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” on concert promoter Bill Graham’s housebout in Sausalito, CA in late summer 1967 while on a break during the “King & Queen” tour. Where Otis Redding wrote “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” is one of the more controversial music topics I’ve seen since we’ve moved out to San Francisco Bay Area.